Musikfest Berlin (1) – Isabelle Faust and friends; MCO/Benjamin: Schoenberg and Benjamin, 12 September 2018

Kammermusiksaal

Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

Isabelle Faust, Anne Katharina Schreiber (violins)

Antoine Tamesit, Danusha Waskiewicz (violas)

Christian Poltéra, Jean-Guihen Queyras (cellos)

Susanna Andersson (soprano)

Krisztina Szabó (mezzo-soprano)

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

George Benjamin (conductor)

Image: © Adam Janisch 

Schoenberg and Benjamin offered a fine welcome back from Berlin and its September Musikfest to a prodigal son – especially so since, only the previous day, I had both received the first proofs for my Schoenberg biography and heard an excellent paper from George Haggett on Benjamin’s Written on Skin at OBERTO’s annual conference. Truth be told, there was for me little in the way of obvious connection between the two works on offer, save for the question of narration, brought very much to the fore in Martin Crimp’s libretto for Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, yet also surely apparent in Verklärte Nacht. Who is telling this story – and on what authority? Two very different genres, composers, ensembles, musical styles and languages nevertheless elicited two memorable performances, Into the Little Hill outstandingly so.

Schoenberg’s tone poem for string sextet – we should never forget that radicalism in itself, already seeking to reconcile and to renew Wagner and Brahms – opened, if not quite on the verge of audibility, then soft, mysterious enough to make us listen: pointing ahead to Webern, even to Nono. Christian Poltéra’s solo cello, soon joined by other ‘lower’ strings – can they really be lower when they make up four out of six? – proved febrile, indicative of human fragility, although certainly never fragile in a performative sense. Violins, especially Isabelle Faust, sometimes seemed more overtly keen to evoke elements of what may – or may not – be ‘period’ practice. Portamento was, at least initially, more in evidence from them, vibrato somewhat sparing. Led by Jean-Guihen Queyras and Antoine Tamesit, nocturnal blossoming thereby provoked proved a rare, even breathtaking treat. Not that any one of these musicians was ‘leading’ the music-making for more than a few bars: this is chamber music and so it sounded.

The violence of Benjamin’s opera was certainly prefigured at times in musico-narrative gestures in the Schoenberg’s performance, pizzicato anything but soothing. Narrative, moreover, was unquestionably to the fore, questioning whatever distinctions we might make between ‘musical’ and ‘poetic’ concerns. Twists and turns in individual lines aurally suggested those of a Jugendstil drawing, leaves, branches, lightness, and darkness of the forest, both material and metaphysical, emerging and transforming before our ears. Bar a patch of decidedly wayward intonation from Faust, the lack of smoothness was decidedly to be welcomed, each line seemingly re-thought, even re-composed according to the needs of the moment. The moment of change, of transformation was undeniable with Queyras’s cello solo. I felt a sense of transfiguration less: perhaps that was the point. In its particular materialism, not least in the vibrato-less moonlit silver of the close, this performance seemed to declare affinity with and distance from the orchestral tone poems of Strauss.

Schoenberg’s supposed antipode, Stravinsky was present, or so it sounded, in the opening of Into the Little Hill. Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Friends one might almost have called it. Moreover, soon it became clear that voices, even voices with words, might act instrumentally – take Krisztina Szabó’s use of consonants in ‘The Minister and the Crowd’ – as well as vice versa. All along, one heard both in work and performance a chiselled precision from Benjamin – who also conducted – that might, I suppose, be likened to Stravinsky (or Ravel, or many other composers), but which is without question the composer’s own. The precise choice of note, duration, timbre speaks for itself, whatever it might ‘mean’. An almost unbearably suspenseful scene between The Minister and The Stranger, the latter’s evil seduction both verbal (Susanna Andersson) and instrumental, made as powerful a dramatic, political point as if it had been staged.

The quiet tension of silence proved just as telling at that pivotal scene’s close, the shifty politician having sworn on his sleeping child: ‘unlike your god/unlike your word/unlike your smile/-[he] is innocent’. It was, though, the quiet tension of music, of musical processes, generated and generative, in the ensuing Interlude: it did what needed – what someone alleged was needed – to be done. ‘Why must the rats die, Mummy?’ The will of the people, in reality the satisfaction of the mob, would now be put into effect.

And so, in Part Two, the Minister re-elected, we could look or rather hear inside his head. There was an excellent, truly dramatic sense of a second ‘act’, of time having passed: Stravinskian sonorities once again reborn, fatally so. ‘And music?’ asked the Stranger upon his return. ‘All music – smiles the minister – is incidental.’ Is it really? The darkness of the eighth scene for ‘Mother(s) and Child(ren)’ was all too real, ghosts – burrowing children inside the Little Hill – in Benjamin’s machine likewise. ‘The deeper we burrow the brighter his music burns. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? Can’t you see?’

Queyras/Melnikov - Beethoven, 30 November 2014

Wigmore Hall

Cello Sonata in F major, op.5 no.1

Cello Sonata in G minor, op.5 no.2

Seven Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,’ WoO 46

Cello Sonata in A major, op.69

Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

 

My only regret connected with this concert was that teaching rendered me unable to attend its successor the following evening, when Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov completed their survey of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano. This was splendid chamber-music-making: no particular ‘points’ being made, but simply, though in reality not at all ‘simply’, excellent communication and exploration of fine music.

 

The first sonata, op.5 no.1, opened in light, understated fashion, which yet told of tensions beneath the surface, this first movement introduction pregnant, as any Beethovenian introduction should be, with possibilities. Energy was pent up ready for the exposition proper, the tempo strikingly yet convincingly flexible. Sharply pointed, sharply directed, that exposition and indeed the performance as a whole were imbued with a crucial sense that every note mattered. Influences of Mozart and Haydn were certainly felt, but Beethoven’s identity remained unmistakeable. Expansiveness was relished but direction was maintained. Queyras proved both lithe and lyrical, Melnikov properly protean. The second movement was playful, with a keen sense of response between the players. A fleet tempo never moved towards being garbled, as it might have done in lesser hands. Balance was never a problem, even when Melnikov occasionally made an almighty noise. Formal roots may have lain in Haydn, but again there was no mistaking the composer.

 

The companion sonata, in G minor, followed. This is a key that inevitably brings Mozart to mind, and the introduction to the first movement certainly seemed haunted, though never overwhelmed, by his ghost. There was a tragic impulse, laudably never hurried, to the main body of the movement too. Major mode passages were given their due, but one heard them in the light of the tonic key. Motivic working and harmony worked in tandem to propel the sonata’s progress. The second movement offered tonal and, again, playful relief. There was grace aplenty, Queyras’s lyricism especially appreciated, but above all a sense of response to tensions previously explored. Not, of course, that that response was too readily accomplished, but accomplished it was.

 

The ‘Bei Männern’ Variations received a cultivated performance. Inventiveness, more in an eighteenth-century than Diabelli-like fashion, was the hallmark of work and performance, the latter detailed without being fussy. The variety of ‘voices’ Queyras extracted from his instrument was noteworthy, both in itself and for its expressive use. The sadness of the minor-mode variation, the scherzo-like quality of its successor – again, that playfulness! – and the rapt ornamentation of the sixth: all those qualities and more served both to differentiate and to dramatise.

 

The greater complexity of the op.69 Sonata in A major was apparent from the outset, enjoining the listener to still greater effort, the performance however an excellent guide to such effort. Simplicity of building blocks and complexity of what the composer does: such was the dialectic to be explored here. Melnikov took more of an obvious lead in the second movement, though not at Queyras’s expense. Rhythmic command proved crucial for both, the incessant quality of Beethoven’s writing unfailingly communicated. The finale opened as if the slow movement we had yet to hear. It was a surprise well concealed until the moment of telling. And even then, contrast between music of differing pulse was very much at the heart of the performance. Dynamic contrasts and transitions worked similarly. There was ultimate musical exultance, but it remained of a reflective character.

 

 

 

Jean-Guihen Queyras/Alexandre Tharaud, Wigmore Hall, 27 April 2009

Wigmore Hall

Webern – Three Little Pieces, op.11
Brahms – Sonata for cello and piano no.1 in E minor, op.38
Berg – Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, op.5 (arr. for cello and piano)
Debussy – La plus que lente (arr. for cello and piano by Léon Roques)
Debussy – Sonata for cello and piano in D minor

Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)
Alexandre Tharaud (piano)

This enterprising programme opened with an outstanding performance of Webern’s Op.11 Pieces. Absolutely every note told, almost – perhaps not even ‘almost’ – a melody in itself, yet never merely pointillistic; connections told equally. The rarity of the air breathed in the opening movement not only contrasted with but prepared the way for the violent beauty of the ensuing Sehr bewegt, which in turn brought us to the threshold of that extraordinary yearning intensity which characterises the final piece, its marking, Äußerst ruhig, almost as beautiful as the music itself. The final cello note was of truly unearthly beauty, leading us straight into the first Brahms cello sonata. Webern’s work proved not only a gem in itself but a prologue to Brahms’s sonata, making us listen once again to every note and to the connections between them and equally compelling us to sense the precariousness of Brahmsian tonality.

The opening movement of the Brahms was often understated though never reticent; the emotional impact of certain key moments was thereby allowed to register more powerfully than might have been the case with hearts fully on sleeves. An impassioned, indeed violent section in the development was a particular example of this; Webern returned, if indeed he had ever been away. This Brahms was noble, not self-pitying, modernist not comfortable. The clarity of Alexandre Tharaud’s piano playing in no way precluded a sense of mystery; it simply took such mystery to a more sophisticated level. What had begun as rather ‘French’-sounding Brahms in its tone, took on a more Romantic murmuring as we were led towards the ambiguous consolation – is it even that? – of the lullaby theme. Throughout there was an underlying menace, unease, especially from Tharaud. Jean-Guihen Queyras proved a fine partner, constantly attentive to the shifts of emphasis in the collaboration between two instrumentalists, not least when his phrases imitated yet subtly altered in retrospect those of the piano. My only real reservation lay with his fundamental tone, which could sometimes veer a little towards thinness, even rawness. I was not entirely sure, but I suspected that he might be playing on gut strings; there was certainly a suggestion of this in his playing, which could sound a touch forced at climaxes. Tharaud and Queyras adopted a sensible tempo for the Allegretto quasi menuetto; take it too fast, as happens all too often, and the shifting harmonies and rhythmic subtleties will perforce be skated over. Here we were treated to a winning, almost Schubertian lilt and grace. The trio had just the right balance of flow and hesitation. Tharaud’s expertise in Baroque repertoire made itself apparent in the fugal opening to the final Allegro. Queyras’s entry was rightly voiced as part of the overall texture rather than as a ‘solo’ voice; such a privilege had to be earned and even then would only be granted provisionally. This was an extremely troubled reading; occasionally, I wondered whether it might have yielded a touch more but perhaps that would have been to alter its character. Despite the slight lack I felt of a richer cello tone, there was a strong sense of the tragic to what remained a fine performance.

I had no reservations whatsoever concerning the performance of an arrangement (I know not by whom, but it was most convincing) of Berg’s Op.5 Pieces. From the opening bars of the first movement, we were reminded how strange Berg’s harmonies can still sound, if anything still more so than the sparer Webern, given the jostling and merging of the myriad of voices in Berg’s labyrinthine world. We stood very close to the Op.6 Orchestral Pieces. The slow insistence of the piano chords at the opening to the second piece proved interestingly reminiscent of the second of Schoenberg’s equally unusually aphoristic Op.19 Piano Pieces. Lyricism from the cello stopped short, quite rightly, from false consolation. The following piece, marked Sehr rasch, brought a wealth of tonal colours from both performers, the utmost rhythmical flexibility serving to portray a floating, indeed gravity-less world in which form is constantly re-created. Tharaud’s voicing of the piano chords in the final piece was exquisite, with a similarly subtle insistence to his performance of the second movement; Queyras’s uncertain, quasi-vocal lyricism was reminiscent of what we had heard from him there, conjuring up formal connections before our ears. A truly terrifying outburst was followed by desolate subsiding – not, however, into nothing, but into the opening of Debussy’s La plus que lente. Performed in violinist Léon Roques’s arrangement, there was an intriguing alternation between insinuating irony and something apparently more ardent, putting me a little in mind of Poulenc. Queyras’s tone here seemed a better match with the music than in the Brahms.

The final item on the programme was the Debussy cello sonata. Tharaud’s opening piano chords immediately put me in mind of the music of ‘old France,’ inciting a true sense of fantasy in Queyras’s response. Unsettling rumblings in the piano bass sparked off cello agitation, to which the instrument’s ‘natural’ lyricism attempted, albeit ever so equivocally, to respond. Debussy’s concision in this work seems to me almost as remarkable as that of Webern; that is certainly how it sounded here. The strangeness of the second movement’s opening pizzicato dance fully registered; for all Debussy’s classicism, this was modernism with a vengeance. Queyras was superbly partnered by Tharaud, able to suggest string pizzicato on the piano as if it were the easiest thing in the world. There was a wonderful give and take between the two musicians, so impressive that one almost did not notice it. Tharaud in particular imparted a clear sense of harmonic direction to the finale, absolute rhythmical precision from both players allowing full measure to the composer’s virtuosic flights of fancy.

As an encore, we were treated to the Ballabile from Poulenc’s cello sonata. This struck just the right note of exact whimsy, the contradictions in the composer’s lovable personality productively to the fore. There was exemplary clarity yet a palpably beating heart; ravishing piano tone gave way like a flash to aristocratic insouciance. Something serious, yet not too serious, lay behind this clown’s face.

This concert, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, will be repeated next Saturday at 7 p.m.