Salzburg Festival (7) - Three Sisters, 24 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Irina – Dennis Orellana
Masha – Cameron Shahbazi
Natasha – Kangmin Justin Kim
Tuzenbach – Mikołaj Trąbka
Vershinin – Ivan Ludlow
Andrei – Jacques Imbrailo
Kulygin – Andrei Valentiy
Anfisa – Aleksander Teliga
Solyony – Anthony Robin Schneider
Doctor – Jörg Schneider
Rode – Seiyoung Kim
Fedotik – Kristofer Lundin
Mother – Eva Christine Just
Protopopov – Henry Diaz
Girl – Johanna Lehfeldt

Director – Evgeny Titov
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Emma Ryott
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Sound design – Paul Jeukendrup
Dramaturgy – Christian Arseni  

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus
Masha (Cameron Shahbazi), Solyony (Anthony Robin Schneider), Vershinin (Ivan Ludlow)

Chekhov operas are distinctly thin on the ground. I am not sure that is a bad thing. Adaptations that end up being little more – at least dramatically – than abridgements with music are rarely the most convincing of operas. There are splendid cases of plays more or less set to music and thereby transformed, but they are not especially common—and with good reason. Whatever one might say of Pelléas et Mélisande, it is an exceedingly uncommon work (with apologies to Mr Kipling). Some transformations much more than that, of course, yet remain strangely misunderstood. I cannot help but think, one year on from his death, of Alexander Goehr’s Brechtian reworking of King Lear, Promised End. Yet cases in which a work is truly rethought as a musical drama are fewer than one might hope for. Peter Eötvös’s first opera Three Sisters (Три сестры/Tri Sestry) triumphantly succeeds in that respect and in others, not only ‘in itself’ as a work but also in this estimable Salzburg production, a fine cast and Klangforum Wien conducted by Maxime Pascal (and Alphonse Cemin offstage) and directed by Evgeny Titov. 

I was interested to learn after the event that librettist and dramaturge Claus H. Henneberg had initially presented Eötvös with ‘a pared-down version … able to offer us an overview of the play’s dense content in just a few dozen pages’. It was, Eötvös went on, ‘a respectable piece of work. But as I read it, I realised that this was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted. His endeavours to abridge Chekhov’s play had robbed it of all his drama. The subtle tensions between its characters had been completely lost. The drama had become empty.’ To the great credit of both composer and librettist, they started again, Henneberg affording Eötvös ‘complete freedom to change any aspect of his libretto at my own discretion, even if it meant writing a completely new text for the work I wanted to compose.’ That is what happened with ‘an utterly different approach’ that instead focused on different ‘sequences’ of events in the play, organised around three of the characters, Irina, Andrei, and Masha. It worked – and works – both as a drama in itself and indeed as a metadrama on the original Three Sisters, without ever falling into the trap of mostly being the latter. How so? Partly through skilful re-adaptation by Henneberg; partly through the drama’s coming into being as a musical drama, music integral to the text just as it would be in Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Berg, or any other opera composer worthy of the name; and partly, of course, through staging and performance. Ultimately faithful to Chekhov through infidelity, the adaptation presents human relationships, missed opportunities, their detail, and their sadness, reimagined with great power and humanity, in and through the bleakness. 

Olga (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen), Masha, Irina (Dennis Orellana)

Indeed, the opening Prologue impressed upon us not only the bleakness – though it did, in ineffably ‘Russian’ sound – but also the way suffering becomes memory, as the three sisters (not, be it noted, identical to the persons of the ensuing three Sequences) imagined themselves about, once more, to start again. There was an unmistakeably – if impossible to define – ‘Russian’ sound, both from the musicians in the pit and from the offstage orchestra. It complemented, was complemented by, and seemed almost to be in a state of co-creation with the memories turned to Felsenreitschule stone of Rufus Didwiszus’s set designs, as well as what we heard. And in one important sense, despite it all, this was a starting point, for the opera, as we moved first to Irina, the Baron, the fire and so on, leaving that first sequence with the Baron’s death—thus returning us to where we started, undermining it, and preparing the way for a different sequence. Triangular relationships – for Eötvös, the ‘primary construct’ for play and opera alike’ – characterise what we see and hear, transforming before us, but also offering a foundation for the composer’s dramaturgically generative use of triadic harmonies, ‘constantly changing … internal structure’. A post-Webern world of intervallic construction, even constructivism, merges with a sort of modern (in some ways, even pre-modern) world of Affekt, whilst instrumentation mirrors and contributes to characterisation: Olga ‘represented’ – to use Eötvös’s own term – by flute, Irina by oboe, Masha by clarinet, and Andrei by bassoon; likewise their spouses, in variants of those instrumental timbres, Natasha, for instance by saxophone, related to, yet perhaps mocking or holding in outrage Andrei’s essence. ‘Representation’ is not a static matter, of course; one follows their instrumental lines just as one does their words, vocal lines, and gestures. That is the performing text—and it is far from a reduction. 

The element of Japanese theatre often strong in Eötvös’s music, overtly dramatic or otherwise, is also pervasive here, not least in the use of male singers for all parts. Eötvös settled on the idea having originally intended to cast conventionally, then deciding to have all roles sung by women, an option rejected since he thought it would ‘come across as fetishism’. Here, the very different vocal qualities of the different counter-tenors, nonetheless retaining adherence to a certain vocal type that can suggest abstraction, felt as if it were performing a role not entirely dissimilar to use of masks. (Eötvös wrote the three sisters’ parts so they could be sung by men or women, but had his preference for male singers confirmed by experience.) Titov’s staging took a different route, rubble and memory all around, highly ‘dramatic’ in a more conventional Western sense, yet also alert to moments of humour, crisis, and much else. Indeed, homing in on the expressive and dramatic content of particular aspects of the sequences fulfilled a quasi-musical role of its own. There was something deeply moving, for instance, to Andrei’s difficult emergence from his fat suit, like a butterfly from its (in this case cruelly imposed) chrysalis, albeit shorn of hope at either end. Olga’s celebrated observation that her brother had grown fat and slothful had marked him until now (in his sequence, if not previously). Was this now an opportunity for him to sing or at least to lament freely? Yes and no. He was naked, literally and figuratively, onstage; inevitably, though, it changed nothing. We could not be in the business of happy endings. 

Kulygin (Andri Valentiy), Vershinin, Irina, Masha,
Tuzenbach (Mikołaj Trąbka), Doctor (Jörg Schneider)

None of this would have amounted to much without a set of excellent, often outstanding musical – and acted – performances. Klangforum Wien, with its two conductors, led us into a musical labyrinth that, whilst hardly Boulezian, certainly showed many points of contact, following the mini-series ‘À Pierre’, which had finished the afternoon prior to this performance. Pascal’s timing, whether of moments, sections, or the greater span of the constructed drama, had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it: both in itself and in combination with Titov’s staging. Balance, atmosphere, momentum, and magical moments of reflection all contributed to the greater whole. 

As our first ‘featured’ sister, Irina, Dennis Orellana offered a deeply sympathetic, emotionally complex reading, setting the stall, as it were, for further explorations and in fine counterpoint with Mikołaj Trąbka’s ardent Baron Tuzenbach. Cameron Shahbazi’s alluring, compelling Masha – neither quite drag-like or entirely un-drag-like – and the poignantly wise (if only up to a point) Olga of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen were equally well drawn, both in themselves and in the constantly shifting ‘triangles’ of the work. Kangmin Justin Kim’s increasingly outrageous Natasha, at one point pulling her lover Protopopov (Henry Diaz) along with a leash, was perhaps all the more monstrous, all the more hateful than in Chekhov. Jacques Imbrailo’s Andrei both deserved better and yet did not, given a reading that helped explain, rather than simply depict, his personal tragedy. Aleksander Teliga made an outsize impression as the Prozorovs’ old nurse. Ivan Ludlow’s Vershinin did much to convey a hinterland that in context could often only be suggested. All contributed to the success of a production which deserves to be seen elsewhere. Let us hope other houses will take it up, thereby proving more than a melancholic memory.

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Salzburg Festival (1) - GF Haas: Koma, 24 July 2024

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Michaela – Sarah Aristidou
Jasmin – Pia Davila
Alexander, Mother – Daniel Gloger
Michael – Peter Schöne
Dr Auer – Susanne Gritschneder
Dr Schönbühl – Henriette Gödde
Nurse Jonas – Karl Huml
Nurse Nikos – Benjamin Chamandy
Nurse Zdravko – Raphael Sigling

Klangforum Wien
Bas Wiegers (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

One of Alexander Pereira’s most successful innovations at the Salzburg Festival was the introduction of an ‘Ouverture Spirituelle’ at its beginning. Pereira’s practice, long since discarded, was to open that opening, as it were, with a performance of Haydn’s Creation; if memory serves me correctly, I recall him saying that he was a descendant of an original subscriber. (I attended ten years ago, fortunate to hear Bernard Haitink as the conductor.) On first glance, the idea of a smaller, related festival of sacred music, utilising Salzburg’s array of churches, might by now seem to have been stretched to or beyond breaking point into a vague selection of ‘spiritually’ inclined works. What music, the sceptic might ask, is not in some sense ‘spiritual’? There is, I think, some force to that objection. However, if one looks to the more specific theme or motto this year adopted by Markus Hinterhäuser, ‘Et exspecto’, there is perhaps a similar drawing of order, if not out of chaos, then out of its perceived danger.

It certainly helps us to understand the inclusion of a concert performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’s one-act, two-hour-long opera, Koma, concerned, as its name suggests, with the liminal experience of a patient, possibly following a suicide attempt, in a coma, gaining and losing consciousness. The opera is told and, I think, experienced from the standpoint of Michaela, the outstanding Sarah Aristidou, placed quite separately from the rest of the cast: tellingly, unseen to us (at least to me and I assume to everyone else), somehow both inverting and yet strengthening the idea of an out-of-body experience. But the most striking element, at least initially so, both of work and performance, is that much of it – about half – takes place in the dark. Music in ‘complete’ darkness has long been a Haas preoccupation. Twenty minutes of in vain, one of the last great musical works of the twentieth century take place in darkness; so does the entirety of the composer’s Third String Quartet. 

In our world, darkness is rarely if ever ‘complete’. Here, in the Mozarteum’s Grosser Saal, there were a few signs of light, once one’s eyes adjusted, and not only from glimpses of fluorescent watches that must now be in vogue. (Recurrent sight of one would prove aggravating in another festival performance, in which lights were only dimmed. Are these the new mobile telephones?) One’s sight, like other senses, can play tricks too, which I think comes closer to the point or to one of them. The principal point, however, remains darkness: what and how one experiences things in it, and its transition to other states, be they light, something more crepuscular, or death. 

This, the second in a series of three chamber operas Haas wrote with Händl Klaus for Schwetzingen – to his delight, he found the old theatre highly appropriate for darkness – naturally also explores, and raises questions, concerning how music might be made in such conditions, and others. Haas acknowledges it must be a ‘nightmare’ for the conductor, having to wait for the light once again to come to do his thing, having to pick up from where the musicians have brought him. Yet, as with many aspects of this work, one might say that such helplessness is simply a heightened experience of what is already the case. After all, the conductor almost never makes music directly at all; he is both all powerful and entirely in the musicians’ power. I use ‘he’ here, simply because it is the appropriate pronoun for Bas Wiegers, whose accomplishment in leading the musicians of Klangforum Wien was every bit as remarkable, in a good way, as theirs—and the singers’. Doctors, nurses, members of Michaela’s family, with memories they wished and most certainly did not wish, to dredge up or have dredged up, came and went, transformed: fascinatingly, in the case of her brother-in-law Alexander metamorphosing into a countertenor Mother, given an often visceral performance from Daniel Gloger. 

That seemed to be almost a visual counterpart or instantiation (Wagner’s ‘deeds of music made visible’ even) of Haas’s musical language and method. Clearly, one cannot write music for the darkness just as one might for the light, but that is probably not as such the point, or at least my point. The post-spectralist spaces opened up, inhabited, and extended by what we may think of as microtonality but Haas, not unreasonably, prefers to consider as music beyond the twelve notes of the chromatic scale sounded as a necessary realm for this drama of states, transitions, memories, and more. I was put in mind also of Schoenberg’s Erwartung, in which a moment in perception is stretched out to thirty minutes and experienced as such. There is no suggestion that this is taking place here in any literal sense, but such heightened states perhaps hold something in common. Ultimately, though, this was a singular, yet very human experience, whose lack of staging for Haas proved an advantage rather than a compromise. We may or may not agree; in all such cases, there is gain and loss. But then such is life. Such also are death and, doubtless, a host of states in between.

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. 

Salzburg Festival (8) and (9) - noted, not reviewed

These ones are just to be noted as diary items, for which apologies. I normally try to write something up irrespective of whether I have had a press ticket, but in this case, time has run away and I have had to restrict myself. In any case, both concerts will, I am sure, have been extensively reviewed elsewhere - and I shall publish my programme note to the first concert next month anyway. Both were excellent, the concert from Igor Levit and friends quite outstanding, as you might have expected. My silence means nothing more than a lack of time in this case...

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum (12 August 2017)

Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op.41

Beethoven:  Fifteen Variations with a Fugue in E-flat major, ‘Eroica Variations’, op.35

Rzewski: The People United will Never be Defeated!

Igor Levit (piano)

Dorte Lyssewski (speaker)

Klangforum Wien (Sophie Schafleitner, Annette Bik (violins), Dimitrios Polisoidis (viola), Andreas Lindenbaum (cello))

Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (15 August 2017)

Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg

Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov – Dmitri Ulyanov

Zinoviy Borisovich Izmailov – Maxim Paster

Katerina Lvovna Izmailova – Evgenia Muraveva

Sergei – Brandon Jovanovich

Aksinya, Woman Convict – Tatyana Kravtsova

Shabby Peasant – Andrei Popov

Millhand – Igor Onishchenko

Coachman, Teacher – Vasily Efimov

Porter, Sentry – Oleg Budaratskiy

Pope – Stanislav Trofimov

Chief of Police – Alexey Shishlyaev

Policeman, Office - Valentin Anikin

Sonyetka – Ksenia Dudnikova

Old Convict – Andrii Goniukov

Manager – Gleb Peryazev

First Worker – Martin Müller

Oleg Zalytskiy – Second Worker, Drunken Guest

Third Worker – Ilya Kutyukin

Andreas Kriegenburg (director)

Harald B. Thor (set designs)

Tanja Hofmann (costumes)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Angelika-Prokopp-Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Mariss Jansons (conductor)

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…

Klangforum Wien/Brönnimann - Boulez, 19 June 2017

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus

… explosante-fixe… (1971-1993)

Répons (1981-85)

Eva Furrer, Vera Fischer, Thomas Frey (flutes)

Lukas Schiske (xylophone, glockenspiel)

Alex Lipowski (vibraphone)

Virginie Tarrête (harp)

Jan Rokyta (cimbalom)

Joonas Ahonen, Florian Müller (pianos)

Peter Böhm, Florian Bogner, Gilbert Nouno (electronics)

Klangforum Wien

Baldur Brönnimann (conductor)

And so with this unforgettable concert – could there ever be a forgettable concert of this music? – the Vienna Konzerthaus’s Boulez festival came to a close. ...explosante-fixe… and Répons? To quote a little-remembered, sometime Leader of the Labour Party, one Ed Miliband: ‘Hell, yes!’

Enough of such unwelcome recollections. Eva Furrer, whom I had most recently admired playing the contrabass flute in Beat Furrer’s FAMA last year, this time took the central, or perhaps better most central, midi-flute part, ably partnered by Vera Fischer and Thomas Frey, and indeed by Klangforum Wien and Baldur Brönnimann. There is no room for egotism in music such as this; the ensemble is all. For me – it depends, to a certain extent where one sits – the work began with expectant breathing behind me. Eclat upon éclat followed from the dazzling ensemble. Sounds emerged from all around and, so it seemed, even from within my head. It was a little, even before the event, as if Répons were being born here; in a sense, it was. Our three guides through the labyrinth – or are they the three most beguiling flute-minotaurs, sirens even? – offered up a garden of heavenly delights. (I might as well carry on piling up the metaphors now.) There was so much bubbling beneath and indeed on the surface, that I sometimes felt what I was hearing was Boulez’s response to La Mer; perhaps there are worse ways to think of this music. Or Jeux, perhaps, even a serial Symphonie fantastique at trippy times; a sort of ‘precise wooziness’, verging upon the hallucinatory, suggested itself. The hall’s adjustment of lighting added to the atmospheric difference of purely electronic passages, almost as if the visual equivalent of Messiaen’s grand orgue. An aura of mystery followed, suitably enough. Something had changed, had been transformed; of that we could be sure. The close could be heard as the final trace of fluting Catherine wheels.

Any performance of Répons is, by its very nature, an ‘occasion’, at least a much as Stockhausen’s Gruppen, probably more so. I had only heard the one before: strictly two, since, at the 2015 Salzburg Festival, it was given twice, the audience re-seated so as to hear a different work the second time around. One of Boulez’s concerns, not only in this work, but more generally, was to reinstate – and how triumphantly! – performance. That was most certainly done here, the dizzying virtuosity of all concerned transcendent in a very Lisztian sense. Material, familiar from certain other works, proliferated, I might even say developed, quite differently – whether from those works or from other auditions of this. One needed to listen, of course, for that is performance of a sort too. The magic was such that even Stockhausen would surely have been impressed. Sounds rocketed; musical lines were constructed before our eyes and ears: vertically, horizontally, diagonally. Gallic pianism reinvented itself – as much on the vibraphone and harp as on the pianos themselves. Above all, this music, and music more generally, lived. Perhaps I have Schoenberg too much on my mind at the moment, but I even fancied I heard a ghost or two of one of his waltzes; at any rate, what we heard would never have happened in quite the way it did without him, or Webern, or Debussy, or many others. Nor, of course, would we think quite the way we do about those composers had it not been for Boulez. As the hall, which worked wondrously as an ‘instrument’, fell into darkness, and the music, Jakobsleiter-like, made its way into the ether, one knew that this drama was far from over.

Salzburg Festival (3) - Zagorinskaja/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling - Cerha, Kurtág, and Webern, 6 August 2016

Kollegienkirche, Salzburg

 

Cerha – Les Adieux (Elegie) (2005, rev. 2007)

Kurtág – Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova, op.17 (1981)

Webern – Six Orchestral Pieces, op.6 (1909, rev. for chamber ensemble, 1920)

Cerha – Bruchstück, geträumt (2009)

Natalia Zagorinskaya (soprano)

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

 

The Salzburg Festival here paid tribute, in Fischer von Erlach’s Kollegienkirche, to Friedrich Cerha and György Kurtág in their ninetieth birthday years. We heard two relatively recent works by the Austrian composer, alongside acknowledged masterpieces by Kurtág and Anton Webern: the ‘threshold’, as Pierre Boulez once put it, for music of the second half of the twentieth century – and beyond.

 

Les Adieux (Elegie) was the first of the Cerha works. Its extremity might have sounded post-Webern, but the language owed at least as much, perhaps more, to Berg. At any rate, one was made to listen, in a compelling performance from Klangforum Wien and Sylvain Cambreling. It was a performance between as well as of the notes. Fragmentary melodies, sometimes melodies rather more than fragmentary, whether taking their ordering principles from pitch or from colour, insinuated themselves. Woodwind lines at times took on an arabesque quality. There were some extraordinary chords, ‘in themselves’: both their harmony, and their spacing: like Bruckner, perhaps, in a way, but in a – mercifully – more compact time-frame.

 

Kurtág’s Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova has been with us now for thirty-five years, since its 1981 premiere in Paris, conducted by Boulez. For all the obvious, indeed wondrous, influence of and reaction to Webern – perhaps ‘Webern precedent’ would be better – there was, I thought, also more than a hint of Berg again, especially Lulu, and especially in the vocal line, here delivered and interpreted with authority and imagination by Natalia Zagorinskaya. Perhaps the Schoenberg of Pierrot lunaire too? What a splendid pairing that would make for a concert! At any rate, there was on occasion a hint, never overdone, of cabaret to the proceedings. The dialectical relationship between these twenty-one miniatures, the three parts, and the whole (again, how could one not think of Pierrot?) manifested itself in performance through the surprise of the moment and concern, not least from Cambreling, for the longer line. The virtuosity of Kurtág’s writing was relished by all concerned, as, I thought, was the feminine-feminist standpoint almost forced upon the composer, which is not necessarily to say unwillingly, by Rimma Dalos’s verse. The opening of the second part, ‘Something erotic’, sounded as if it were bathed in ever-transforming moonlight. What a panoply of colours, all silver, yet never quite silver, we heard: it was luminous, angry, frenetic, calm, all with a well-nigh Mozartian profusion of melody.

 

It was fascinating to hear Webern’s op.6 Six Pieces in this context, and in their 1920 chamber ensemble arrangement: not least for what the arrangement told us about what Webern thought about his instrumental lines. The first piece was admirably long-breathed, with a splendidly post-Mahlerian violin solo. The second, ‘Bewegt’, perhaps sounded more similar to its predecessor than it would usually do – at least until it did not. I was put in mind of the ‘obligate Rezitativ’ from Schoenberg’s op.16 Pieces. Viola and harmonica offered a beguiling opening to the third. The Funeral March sounded more transformed than any of its companion pieces, and yet retained its character; it overwhelmed, if anything, even more than it would with full orchestra. Drum rolls, an exquisite, desperate clarinet solo, a harmonium whose sound, not unlike an 8 ft Choir organ stop, suggested something of the acoustic as a whole. Both the fifth and sixth pieces were properly imbued with aftershock. Reconstruction and lament in the latter, crowned by, or submerged, in bells, had me hear the entire work anew.

 

Finally, we heard Cerha’s Bruchstück, geträumt. Opening high violin and viola harmonics had me think of Mahler’s First Symphony, although with no tonality – at least yet – implied. As other instruments joined this dream-landscape, a fuller harmonic spectrum emerged: especially interesting to hear after Webern’s Pieces. Berg, too, once again came to mind, and not just, I think, because of Cerha’s Lulu completion. Indeed, I genuinely thought of Berg first and the completion second in this case. There was a persistent sense of unfolding, both for work and performance: development, if you like, and more Mahler than Bruckner. Climaxes were unerringly well-placed. The intriguing antiphonal counterpoint between harp and plucked piano strings made its point in – yes, dreamlike fashion. If I were less sure about the final resolution, I should happily give the work another hearing.

 

Wien Modern (2): Ahonen/Klangforum Wien/Ceccherini - Sciarrino, 6 November 2015

Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus

Sciarrino – Carnaval (2010-11, Austrian premiere)

Joonas Ahonen (piano)

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

Tito Ceccherini (conductor)

 

The Austrian premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Carnaval was placed in trustworthy hands. One expects excellence from Klangforum Wien and the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, but one should never take excellence for granted. Joined by Joonas Ahonen as pianist (he is in fact a member of Klangforum Wien, but here had soloistic billing) and Tito Ceccherini as conductor, the two ensembles not only displayed musical excellence; they seemed also to express musical delight, a key concept in both the written texts and their musical setting, just as in so many madrigals of old, long an inspiration to Sciarrino. Five voices, piano solo, ten other instrumentalists (two flutes, two clarinets, two trombones, two cellos, three percussionists), and conductor united in a fashion not entirely different from that suggested by Monteverdi’s example.

 

In twelve movements, all but one of them with voices, Carnaval treads a madrigalian line, familiar yet reimagined, between what we might consider, however insufficient the terms, the popular and the aristocratic. But that is not perhaps the most important of its explorations. The written texts, all in Italian, mostly originate in ancient Chinese verse, an Odyssey-like (Sciarrino’s own comparison) homage to the art of Towitara Buoyoyu as well as the more obvious – to most in the West – character-piece homage to Schumann, the ‘fantastic’, and perhaps a tension between larger-scale form and the fragmentary. Masks, disguises, the play of appearance and whatever might lie behind it: such seem to be part of the material, both musical, verbal, and, I think we might say, even with cautionary quotation marks, ‘dramatic’ too. Monteverdi’s dramatic madrigals call into question rigid distinctions between concert and drama; so have many works since, not least some of Schumann’s, and certainly many of Sciarrino’s.
 

 

Voices such as Zhuang Zhou, from the fourth century before Christ, take us up to the final recitative text, elaborated by Sciarrino from a biography of Tao Yuanming. They all treat in some way with the idea and indeed the practical reality of music, and, in more general terms, that of artistic creation and performance too. Love for music and for its performance are not the least of their qualities: kissing the sound of a note sung, for instance (no.10, ‘Lasciar vibrare’: ‘Suono pieno/stordisce/tenue silenzio/trasporta I canti/tu lascia che il suono/baci la sua vibrazione/lascia’). Sometimes, the music offers a strong pictorial element, for instance the traditional word-painting, both instrumental and vocal, upon ‘tremante’ in no.7. In other cases, the relationship is more oblique or more complicated. Infectious joy in music-making is never far away, though, whether in the carolling – or so it seemed to me – of no.4, or the febrile, almost Boulezian – a comparison rather than thesis of ‘influence’ – proliferation of instrumental material in no.11. The social element of a musician’s endeavour – ‘inventing images’ for his friends – has all manner of historical and indeed geographical precedent: the Schubertiade or the heyday of the madrigal itself, as well as more folk-like instances. Here, it seems honestly, playfully reinvented.
 

One might consider the purely instrumental eleventh movement, ‘Stanze della pioggia (dedicato a Maurizio Pollini)’ a concertante piece for piano and ensemble, yet it came across here, most creditably, as perhaps closer still to chamber music. Virtuosity was shared across the ensemble; different soloists emerged as momentarily pre-eminent, but not for the sake of pre-eminence. It stands as longer than any of the other movements, longer than many of them put together. Repeated figures and their variants are passed through the ensemble, but certain instruments, not least one of the cellos, seem to retain a degree of ownership. Perhaps such figures and variants create their own narrative, even their own linguistic world. Do we need words after all? And yet, we return to words for the twelfth movement, that evocation of Tao Yuanming mentioned above. He could make no music, but he had a lute without strings, ‘un liuto senza corde’. Wine plays its part in the verbal resolution, as the piano does in its musical playing out. Such collegiality and conviviality seem not the least of the delights one might take home, at least in memory, from such a musical feast. A renaissance of the Renaissance, perhaps: or, so we fancy.
 

Birtwistle and Dowland - 'Sterben werd’ ich, um zu leben,' Montalvo/Klangforum Wien/Rundel, 18 April 2011

Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

Birtwistle – Nine settings of Celan, for soprano and chamber ensemble
interspersed with:
Dowland – Lachrimae, arranged by Andreas Lindenbaum for violin, two violas, cello, and double bass

Marisol Montalvo (soprano)
Klangforum Wien
Peter Rundel (conductor)

Yes, you did read that correctly: ‘Sterben werd’ ich, um zu leben,’ as in the final movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony. The Berlin Konzerthaus is organising something rather more interesting, indeed original, than many halls for the Mahler anniversary, a cycle of concerts in three parts of ‘Musik mit Mahler’. If the anniversary must be marked, then to use Mahler’s symphonies as a way of exploring other repertoire seems just the ticket.

Here resurrection took on a decidedly darker hue, with Birtwistle’s settings of Paul Celan, as translated by Michael Hamburger, scored for soprano, two clarinets, viola, cello, and double bass. Klangforum Wien gave the first performance of the complete work in 1996 and clearly has the music in its collective bones. The present performance was inspired and inspiring, not least on account of Peter Rundel’s intelligent direction. Marisol Montalvo made a generally good impression as soprano, though sometimes her American accent sounded a little out of place – at least to an Englishman. At the heart of Birtwistle’s music is a melancholy that Montalvo’s more showy delivery did not always quite capture, though the final sound of her unaccompanied voice, deserted by instruments, was chilling, likewise the iridescence of her voice in combination with instruments during ‘Mit Brief und Uhr’ . Clarinets are a typical vessel of Birtwistle’s expression, here (Reinhold Brunner and Bernhard Zachhuber) harking back on occasion to the hieratic timelessness of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments as well as to the violence of Birtwistle’s own Punch and Judy, later arabesques ably echoed by soprano, and vice versa. ‘Tenebrae’ seemed to acquire further meaning when heard at the beginning of Holy Week – even when, perhaps particularly when, performed in one of the most atheistic cities in the world.

Every bit as inspired was the decision to perform the Celan settings interspersed with John Dowland’s Lachrymae, here arranged for strings by cellist Andreas Lindenbaum, on hand to perform, alongside Gunde Jäck-Micko on violin, violists Andrew Jezek and Dimitrios Polisoidis, and double bassist Uli Fussenegger. Vibrato was avoided, though I thought I heard a little more as time went on. Perhaps it was; perhaps my ears had adjusted. The motivation in recreating the world of the viol consort was clear, though I could not help but wish for a little more variation in tone quality on occasion. That said, the excellent players afforded ample opportunity to luxuriate in the plangent melancholy of Dowland’s harmonies. This was not quite Haydn’s Seven Last Words: for one thing, there is greater variety of tempo. However, the effect was not entirely dissimilar, suggesting another possible companion piece for Birtwistle’s settings. Dowland, however, remains closer in spirit to his great English successor than Haydn will ever be, with Purcell’s Fantazias another ghost at the feast.

The Rape of Lucretia, Klangforum Wien, 5 April 2008

(concert performance)

Konzerthaus, Vienna

Angelika Kirchschlager – Lucretia
Emma Bell – Female Chorus
Ian Bostridge – Male Chorus
Christopher Maltman – Tarquinius
John Relyea – Collatinus
James Rutherford – Junius
Jean Rigby – Bianca
Malin Christensson – Lucia

Klangforum Wien
Robin Ticciati (conductor)

The idea of Britten in Vienna was appealing. No music benefits from being treated as the property of a particular nation – unless, that is, such particularist ‘tradition’ involves special pleading. Britten anyway seems now to be gaining greater exposure on the Continent than would have been the case until quite recently. Looking at the cast list, however, dispelled the illusion that this might have been a truly international performance. There is, of course, nothing wrong with casting English singers, but it was more of a home from home than one might have initially expected. Angelika Kirchschlager and Malin Christensson were the only exceptions to the Anglophone rule.

That said, there was no uniformity amongst the cast. Ian Bostridge and Emma Bell delivered their roles as Chorus with great skill, although in rather different fashion. With Bostridge, most listeners will know what to expect. The contorted facial expressions were not for the queasy, and there was, needless to say, more than a little vocal mannerism. Britten supplies quite enough of that already for my taste. By the same token, however, Bostridge’s delivery was in general impressively handled, with due attention paid to words, pitch, and modulation. It was only really during the Interlude to Act One, in which the Male Chorus recounts Tarquinius’s furious ride to Rome, that I felt the music and words ran away with him a little. (This may of course not have been by the singer’s own design.) Bell, by contrast, provided a ‘straighter’ reading, for which I stood most grateful. This is not intended to imply dullness or lack of imagination, but it was well focused and free of histrionics, if a little obscure of diction on occasion.

This was not a problem for Christopher Maltman, who to my mind delivered the best performance of the evening. One could sense him itching to be on stage, without this compromising the conditions of concert performance. Every word was made to tell, and the character of Tarquinius – dangerous, powerfully attractive, yet in thrall to his passions and so ultimately weak – was superbly portrayed. I cannot summon up a single caveat regarding this performance. John Relyea was also very fine in the less interesting role of Collatinus. I had most recently heard him in Sir Colin Davis’s LSO concert performance last year of Benvenuto Cellini, and there was no sign of dilution of promise. Relyea has a fine, truly powerful voice, which he knows how to marshal. James Rutherford, by contrast, was a variable Junius. Much of what he sang was respectable, but there was too much imprecision with regard both to pitch – mostly in the lower notes – and to diction.

Perhaps surprisingly, the best female diction came from Malin Christensson, whose silvery soprano was a delight in the role of Lucia. Her interest in Tarquinius, both before and after the deed – unbeknown to her, of course – was genuinely touching. Jean Rigby was in general a characterful Bianca, although not especially alluring. Angelika Kirchschlager varied in the role of Lucretia. Much of her portrayal was impressive: well-acted, within the constraints of a concert performance, and secure of tone. Sometimes, however, the acting got the better of the music, which is more of a problem in a concert performance than on stage. Her words were not always clear either. I have mentioned diction a few times, because it is important in itself, but also since if I, as a native English-speaker could often not discern the words, then I doubt that many of the Viennese could. Printing the words with German translation in the programme doubtless helped, but consulting them should be a last resort.

For the Klangforum Wien I have nothing but praise. The ensemble’s contribution was the clearest example of Britten freed from parochialism; the music clearly benefited. I do not regard all of the score as equally successful; Britten’s musical facility too often led him in the direction of mere note-spinning. However, the passages most obviously ‘constructed’ here gained an almost Schoenbergian instrumental intensity, relating more to inter-war modernism than to Suffolk. The strings were perhaps exceptional in this regard, but that is more a reflection upon the score than upon the performance. Nothing, I am afraid, can repair the dramatic flaw of the Christian ‘interpretation’ – by turns sentimental, incoherent, or both – transplanted onto an inherently powerful plot, but Klangforum Wien reminded us that there was musical interest nevertheless. I was less sure about Robin Ticciati’s direction. There was nothing terribly wrong with it, apart from a few overtly interventionist passages that simply sounded exaggeratedly slow or fast. For the most part, though, it was not clear that he really added anything. Perhaps most of his work had been done during rehearsal, but the ensemble seemed often – very successfully – to be doing its own thing. Eyes were certainly not always upon the conductor, whose beat seemed vague and who certainly did not help by ostentatiously performing the piano part himself. Just because one can does not mean that one should; numerous instances of arising from the piano stool should either have been more unobtrusively handled or, better still, rendered unnecessary by engaging a pianist from the ensemble. Still, the instrumentalists, every one of them, sounded excellent regardless, although even they could not entirely disguise some of Britten’s more threadbare invention.