Elektra: the opera of lockdown?

 

Berlin Festtage (1) - Schütz/VPO/Barenboim - Boulez and Schubert

Philharmonie

Boulez – Livre pour cordes

Mémoriale
Originel
Schubert – Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 944

Karl-Heinz Schütz (flute)

Christina Bauer, Noid Haberl (electronics)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

No encore, although the audience would clearly have liked one; more to the point, there was a non-advertised late addition to the programme at the beginning. Daniel Barenboim came to the podium and announced that the concert would begin with the Air from Bach’s Orchestral Suite in D major, BWV 1068. Beautiful without affectation, it was a more eloquent mark of respect to those who had lost their lives in the German Wings aeroplane crash than any words. It was not a performance to be ‘reviewed’, but it should be noted.

 

The Vienna Philharmonic strings then launched more or less immediately – though not without unwanted applause, dealt with admirably by Barenboim – into Boulez’s Livre pour cordes. Barenboim’s reading proved, like his Wagner and much else, both spacious and keenly dramatic. I was struck how close the music sounded at times to Bartók. The players, coaxed into playing ‘New Music’, offered crucial subtlety in dynamic gradation and transition; to give an example, the eight double basses’ pizzicato playing was not only admirable in its unanimity but in its acceleration of impetus, driving the music forward just as it might in Beethoven. The piece emerged almost as if a tone poem (of ‘absolute music’).

Mémoriale benefited from another performance of what one might call warm precision: very much akin with much of Boulez’s own later conducting work. Perfect coordination between the magnificent flautist, Karl-Heinz Schütz, and the Vienna strings – interplay and counterpoint, echoes and collision – led us into a beguiling labyrinth indeed. The subtle yet crucial contribution of the horns should also be noted, not least at the end, fading exquisitely into nothingness. Those horns – and their players, or their instruments, according to one’s understanding! – then moved to the other side of the stage, quickly joined by other wind instruments. Two more flautists stood on either side, awaiting the return of Schütz and Barenboim for Originel. But first, Barenboim said a few words, explaining that we should now hear the same material in another Besetzung, referring to Boulez’s love for complexity and kinship both with Mahler and the orchestral Notations. (Difficult to argue with any of that!) The pairing proved genuinely rewarding, both for the mind and the senses. From the presence of clarinets at the opening, soon joined by electronics (Christina Bauer and Noid Haberl, developed and realised at IRCAM), and then the first of the two additional flute Kinder (Barenboim’s term), similarity and difference not only presented themselves but ravished. I wished I could have heard it all again, and that we might have heard any number of other potential versions.

Whilst the connection with Schubert was not overt, the care that Barenboim took to make ‘New’ Music classical and ‘old’ music new was once again clear; so was the superlative playing of the VPO. The introduction to the first movement sounded simply glorious, but more than that, it proved in spirit quite the most Furtwänglerian account I have heard in concert. There was, needless to say, none of that absurd ‘same tempo as the exposition’ nonsense. This was an experience that was mystical in the best sense. The Vienna horns, the oboe, pretty much everything – all sounded to die for. Even the depth of the violas’ sound could not help but strike, could not help but draw one in to the incipient, inexorable drama. But there was no more wallowing in beauty for its own sake than there had been in Boulez. Dark menace was a hallmark of the strings throughout the movement, always in alliance with harmonic motion; indeed, as time went on, the ghost of Klemperer sounded almost as present as that of Furtwängler, just as in much of Barenboim’s recent Beethoven. And indeed there was an almost Beethovenian purpose to the course of the movement, tension between and beneath the notes inescapable. What struck me at the end of the coda was not ‘heavenly length’ but apparent concision.

The Andante con moto was perfectly judged, both parts of the tempo marking honoured. If the oboe solo was undoubtedly exquisite, so were contributions from all of the woodwind. So too was the string playing, sounding new in the light of the Boulez works. Barenboim’s build up to the great climax was both Brucknerian and not, never uncharacteristic. I was left feeling bereft and yet, in the light of the cellos’ song in aftershock, also (potentially) reconciled. The Scherzo’s opening material was played with rustic swagger: more than the odd reminiscence of Haydn. Line, orchestral balance, and, not least, grace were equal partners in crime here. Grace certainly suffused the lovely, yet never too lovely, Trio. It relaxed – out of symphonic necessity. And yet, the harmony ever pushed us forward. There could be no arguing with the heft of the finale, nor, more importantly, with its tension and release. This was a finale truly worthy of the name. It was not only that its thrills were both visceral and intellectual; the performance showed that the two could not be separated. Likewise motivic life in inner parts and the grinding harmonic motion in the bass. If there has been a greater performance of this symphony since Colin Davis in Dresden, maybe even since Karl Böhm, I have not heard it.

 

Wozzeck: Karl Böhm's Bergian reminiscences

Wozzeck, to my mind the very greatest opera of the twentieth century, opens at Covent Garden on Thursday. Here Karl Böhm, a great champion and interpreter, rarely matched and most likely never surpassed, discusses his first encounters with the work and with Berg himself:

Balm for the troubled Mozartian soul

For anyone wishing to exorcise the nightmare of Michael Grandage's mindless Figaro (or for necessary fortification beforehand):

'My favourite album'

Evan Tucker is running a series on his wonderful blog. (Any of you who do not know it already should remedy that straight away). It occurred to me that some readers might be interested in my contribution, for which please click here; for Evan's own contribution, click here.

R.I.P Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the VPO in the finale to Haydn's Symphony no.88

I learned this symphony from Karl Böhm's divine Vienna Philharmonic recording, one of the very first CDs I owned. Bernstein's own particular brand of magic gives Herr Dr Böhm a  run for his money, with the same orchestra, different vintage. And what a splendid choice of encore!

Because it is summer...

..., because this work stands closer to perfection than any other opera will, because this was the opera I saw on my first visit to the Salzburg Festival (I chose it over Boulez conducting Moses und Aron: unwise, perhaps, but understandable, I hope), because one has not heard Mozart until one has heard it played by this orchestra, and because this film was the first opera I owned on video, a birthday present from my music teacher...:

Mozart Unwrapped (4) - King's College Choir/Cleobury, 11 March 2011

Hall One, Kings Place

Missa brevis in B-flat major, KV 275/272b
Divertimento in F major, KV 247, ‘First Lodron Night-Music’
Gradual (Introit): Sancta Maria, mater Dei, KV 273
Missa brevis in F major, KV 192/186f, interspersed with:
Church Sonata in F major, KV 224
Offertorium de B.V. Maria: Alma Dei creatoris, KV 277
Communion: Gregorian chant

Krysia Osostowicz, Giles Francis (violins)
Judith Busbridge (viola)
Bernard Gregor-Smith (violoncello)
Steven Stirling, Sue Dent (French horns)
Peter Buckoke (double bass)
Ben-San Lau, Parker Ramsay (Organ Scholars)
Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Stephen Cleobury (conductor)


Mozart continues to be ‘unwrapped’ at Kings Place. I confess that I no more understand the designation than I did before – or than I did for Beethoven and Chopin – but more importantly, this exploration of sacred and other music for Salzburg offered a delightful evening. The Choir of King’s College under Stephen Cleobury made a welcome debut at the festival, joined by the Dante Quartet and other instrumentalists.

At the heart of the programme stood two missae breves. KV 275/272b, in B-flat major, opened the concert. The unassuming nature of the performance put me in mind of the delightful St John’s recordings of Haydn and Mozart under George Guest. (Cleobury was one of the Guest era’s numerous organ scholars.) That said, the sounds of King’s and John’s remain distinct: the former ‘whiter’, more ‘English’, the latter more ‘Continental’ in timbre. King’s, however, had been joined by a notably fruity tenor, especially prominent when intoning ‘Credo in unum Deum’. After the Credo, a little echo reminded me of its big brother in King’s Chapel itself, but the new location of Hall One, Kings Place, could otherwise hardly stand more distinct from the choir’s home. There were, then, no musical – or rather anti-musical – shock tactics; instead, straightforward musical virtues, such as clarity of line and diction, cleanness of counterpoint, and a decent affection for Mozart’s setting, were to the fore. The Sanctus sounded nicely but never pedantically ‘constructed’; structure is always central, indeed crucial, to Mozart performance. Boys’ voices had a particular opportunity to shine, well taken, in the Benedictus. And the lovingly extended ‘Dona nobis pacem’ music sounded every bit as catchy as it should be.

The rest of the first half was devoted to the First Lodron Night-Music. Three members of the Dante quartet and double bass were now joined by the remaining quartet member (viola) and two horns. This equally delightful divertimento received a performance that was sharp yet warm, and eminently cultivated, its first movement inflections effortlessly ‘natural’: characteristics that ought to go without saying in Mozart performance, yet are frequently notable only by their absence. Inner movements proved elegantly turned indeed, yet each possessed its own particular character, whether the ravishing horn beauties of the third or the joy of the inner parts’ interplay during the fourth. The latter’s minor-mode material provided dignified pathos, without exaggeration, whilst the pizzicato lines of the fifth movement were simply delightful. Mozart’s finale proved as cheekily catchy as the ‘Dona’ music from the mass, all the more so on account of the players’ resisting any temptation heedlessly to rush.



For the second half, the Missa brevis in F major, KV 192/186f, was presented semi-liturgically. That is, to say, there was no celebration of the Mass, but accompanying music was provided, from the introductory Gradual to Gregorian Chant – ‘Beata viscera Mariae Virginis, quae porta verunt aetemi Patris Filium. Alleluia' – which led straight into the Agnus Dei. South German Rococo joy was present, yet never overdone, in the opening Sancta Maria, KV 273: in Mozart, less so often proves more. Once again, musical structure was admirably clear. The Kyrie imparted an apt sense of earlier-century Neapolitan sacred music, its delights heightened once again by admirably cultivated string playing. Viennese style of Caldara and still more Fux came effortlessly to the foreground in the Gloria. It was a joy to hear the chamber organ (Ben-San Lau) for one of those glorious Epistle Sonatas that we seemingly never have opportunity to hear. (If only they could be programmed every time in place, say, of a Vivaldi concerto!) The Credo’s foreshadowing of the triumph of the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony’s finale – its quintessentially Fuxian contrapuntal tag, C-D-F-E, here of course in F major, so F,G, B flat, A – was all the more welcome for being simply presented rather than hammered home. Alma Dei creatoris, the offertory hymn, was distinguished by a radiantly imploring treble line: how could the Mother of God decline to intercede? The censer – albeit English rather than full-bloodedly Austrian Baroque – was almost rendered visible in the jubilant ‘Osanna’.



I look forward to the second instalment on 12 October, when the Second Lodron Night-Music will join two further missae breves, in G major, KV 140 and D major, KV 194/186h, the latter interspersed with further Gregorian chant, the D major Church Sonata, KV 245, the Offertorium, Venite populi, KV 260 and that ineffably sublime late motet, Ave verum corpus, KV 618. For further details concerning ‘Mozart Unwrapped’, click here.