Thomanerchor/Reize - Bach, St John Passion, 28 March 2024

St Thomas’s Church, Leipzig

Bach: St John Passion, BWV 245 (first version, 1724)

Elisabeth Breuer (soprano)

Jakub Jósef Orliński (countertenor)

Daniel Johannsen (tenor)

Benjamin Appl (bass: Christus)

Tomáš Král (bass: arias)

Thomanerchor Leipzig

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Andreas Reize (conductor)

 

At Good Friday Vespers, 1724, in St Nicholas’s Church, Leipzig, the city’s new Thomaskantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, led the first performance of his St John Passion. Three hundred years later, on Good Friday, Bach’s masterwork will return to the same church, performed by the latest incarnation of the composer’s own choir and an orchestra closely related, conducted by the twelfth successor to Bach as Kantor, Andreas Reize. I attended not that performance, but one the previous evening of Maundy Thursday, at the more customary St Thomas’s; it is close enough, I think, to count, without troubling ourselves with complications of lunar versus solar calendars. (For what little it may be worth, the Gregorian calendar had been in use there for a generation.)

Properly enough, the work was given in Bach’s first version of 1724 (strictly, a reconstruction, the score having been lost). It is not so very different from what we usually hear – considerable revisions were made in 1725, mostly reversed in 1749 – but there are a few interesting differences, all of which (I think) had me sit up and notice. The presence of violas d’amore in place of the later muted violins is a case in point. It would be possible to go on at great length about this, and about changes made in the 1730s too, but this is not the place to do so; nor am I a Bach scholar. Details can readily be found elsewhere. Suffice it to say that one of the biggest changes for 1725, loss of the opening chorus, was, Gott sei Dank, not an issue here. 

And so, yes, we heard those cries ‘Herr, unser Herrscher,’ less piercing than usual, given the strange acoustic (and seating arrangement) of the Thomaskirche. This is a church, not a concert hall; hearing the performance from the organ gallery above, and not seeing it at all is an unusual experience. It took my ears a good while to adjust, and I suspect it took the performers, even those accustomed to the space, a while to do so too, given how differently it operates with a full audience/congregation. (It is worth adding that this was a concert, not a service, although it was briefly introduced by Pastor Martin Hundertmark.) Whether the extremely fast – I have never heard so fast – tempo adopted by Reize made sense in these circumstances, or indeed any, I am sceptical, but the turbulence and imploring nature of this figurative curtain-raiser eventually came across. When we heard the words ‘Zeig uns durch deine Passion’, it felt as though that revelation was indeed being prepared. Moreover, choral diction here and throughout were, not least given the immense challenges, highly commendable. 

Tempi were in general very fast indeed; this is probably the norm now, though I struggle to understand why. Obsessive fear of ‘Romanticism’ rapidly shades into dampening of message—at least for some of us. The exceptions were interesting. For instance, the choral ‘Bist du nicht seiner Jünger einer?’ started slowly and accelerated: it certainly made dramatic sense. The moderate tempo to ‘Sei gegüßet, lieber Jüdenkönig!’ was most welcome too, permitting us to hear orchestral detail, in addition to being verbally and dramatically meaningful. Especially in the second part, a greater sense of harmonic rhythm was imparted to such writing, greatly to its and our advantage. As death neared, there was some sense of transformation, of Johannine predestination working its fatal, necessary way. I wondered whether the lack of bite in the chorus in which the high priests tell Pilate the inscription should read not that Christ was king of the Jews, but that he had said he was, was deliberate, an attempt to draw from a sting that now, for obvious reasons, is received problematically. Dramatically, it seemed a pity, but it is understandable. 

Throughout, the Thomanerchor, on home territory in every sense, impressed in what is doubtless a highlight of its year, yet by the same token is very much part of that church year, reliant on and emerging from weekly cantatas. The small solos drawn from its ranks were excellent too. When Reize and the singers drew attention to particular chorale harmonies, underlining subtle yet unmistakable, the effect and consequences were always welcome. Contrast between chorales was also telling. Whether one cared for Johannes Lang’s elaborate organ, stanza-length interpolations between stanzas, would be a matter of taste; on their own terms, they were highly accomplished. Lang even did something similar, albeit more of a lead-in, for the return to the A section in the opening chorus. 

Daniel Johannsen did an heroic job as both Evangelist and solo tenor. At times, quite ‘operatic’ – the first recitative suggested Loge – his approach was always deeply rooted in the text. The words ‘denn es war kalt’ had due, cold bite, for instance, preparing the way for Peter to warm his hands. Peter’s denial and bitter weeping made their point with heightened drama, the following aria (Johannsen’s also) heard in aftershock, yet with continuing bitterness, something akin to ‘Baroque’ expressionism. Benjamin Appl’s Christus was, unsurprisingly, warmer in tone, the natural bloom of his voice well suited to the part, though it varied too, ‘Siehe ist deine Mutter!’ indicative of weariness in a good sense. Bass soloist Tomáš Král presented a fine contrast and complement, his singing beautifully and meaningfully coloured without mannerism, the arioso ‘Betrachte, meine Seel’ a particular highlight. Jakub Jósef Orliński sounded more at home, at least on this occasion, in his second aria than his first. There was a ‘purity’ to the second that did not preclude intense, inner drama. Elisabeth Breuer’s bell-like soprano was likewise projected more successfully in her second aria; how the dissonances ground on the word ‘Zähren’ in a fine collaboration with the musicians around her. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was always supportive, though rarely to the foreground. When its strings had opportunity to show their cultivation, they took it, as in the extraordinary bass number with chorus, ‘Eilt, ihr angefochtnen Seelen’. 

It was, though, principally the choir’s – and Evangelist’s – evening. And above all Bach’s. There is something both indestructible and infinitely adaptable to his music that will perhaps always remain a mystery, though many have attempted explanation. Even in the case of performances and performance ‘styles’ from which one feels personally distanced, it still miraculously speaks. If we are still here in another 300 years, perhaps even if we are not, Bach will endure.

Buchbinder/Gewandhaus/Nelsons - Strauss, 10 May 2022

Barbican Hall

Don Juan, op.20
Burleske
Also sprach Zarathustra, op.30

Rudolf Buchbinder (piano)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

At long last, London seems to be reopening its doors to visiting orchestras; that is, to orchestras visiting from what we on Brexit-Insel shall presumably soon be referring to as ‘the Continent’ and beyond. Not a moment too soon, as this all-Strauss concert from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra reminded us. The orchestra’s magnificent blend of individual virtuosity, from concertmaster to timpanist, with dark, unhomogenised, ‘old German’ tone showed what we have been missing in the meantime. Andris Nelsons revelled in the sheer capability of his orchestra, perhaps sometimes a little too much—but can we really blame him? Even the Barbican’s acoustic did not sound all that bad. 

Don Juan is quite the curtain-raiser, even for the second half of ‘The Strauss Project’, the first instalment having taken place the night before. (Must everything now be a ‘project’, let alone ‘the project’?) It was that combination of virtuosity, which is of course non-negotiable for the piece, with depth, of precision and warmth, that struck me from the outset. I was not entirely convinced by the extremes of tempo Nelsons brought to it, although if I am honest, I enjoyed the languor even as I knew it was wrong (partly how a younger, sterner, long-since-vanquished me thought of Strauss more generally). And there were always sheer phantasmagoria and phantasmagoria-about-to-be-revealed to be enjoyed too. Soloists too numerous to mention shone without exception, though I simply cannot fail to do so for Henrik Wahlgren’s oboe. And the sense of Lenau’s idealism at the end blazed, even if I could not quite tell you how we had got there. The orchestra itself was the thing; and what a thing it was. 

The Burleske for piano and orchestra I still find puzzling, unclear quite what it amounts to or why, though that is doubtless my fault. It seems mostly to fall under Brahms’s spell, with little sign of the real Strauss, but then it is a very early work. Rudolf Buchbinder brought solid technique to the piano part, though he lacked the magic the initially programmed Yuja Wang might have offered. The splendid dialogues between timpani and orchestra, and timpani and piano, were brought vividly to life by Tom Greenleaves. Once again, the Gewandhaus Orchestra sounded outstanding, whetting one’s appetite for Brahms, as well as more Strauss. The account as a whole was well shaped, with a fine command of detail. If ultimately it felt over-extended, that is surely a matter for Strauss rather than Nelsons and Buchbinder. Rather to my surprise, the latter gave a sparkling account as encore of Alfred Grünfeld’s Johann Strauss paraphrase, Soirée de Vienne. There was now something wonderfully old-school to his pianism; it made me smile. 

Also sprach Zarathustra is a very difficult piece to bring off, so much so that often one can wonder whether the fault lies with the piece itself. Nelsons and his orchestra triumphantly showed that it did not, in what is probably the best live performance I have heard of it. Nelsons’s way with it was rather operatic, or at least highly dramatic. And because the drama was there, so too was the irony, both meaningful in practice rather than mere theory. All too often, the opening sounds stiff; here, by contrast, it gave a sense of being alive, even of vitalism as a Nietzschean principle, that persisted and developed throughout. It was moulded, as Strauss must be—this is not music that plays itself—but unobtrusively, so as to give the illusion of something ‘natural’. Richness and cultivation of solo string tone simply had to be heard to be believed: next stop, the Prelude to Capriccio, it seemed. Its expansion into the entire string section likewise seemed to prefigure that opera’s ‘Mondscheinmusik’. Here, one knew, was a collection of soloists that could t turn into a unified mass at the drop of a hat. Hearing that transformation was itself worth the price of entry, as were those darker-still passages that threatened to turn into Die Frau ohne Schatten. The fugue took its time, but with an air of mystery to it such as I cannot recall; at last, I felt its dramatic sense. Waltzing was so infectious I could actually see members of the orchestra, listening to their colleagues, sway. Nelsons showed a keen sense, moreover, of how Strauss builds the tone-poem motivically, in tandem with harmony and overall structure. There is no room, nor was there in performance, for the either/or here. For there was a sense of joy, not always a characteristic associated with Strauss, that here seemed ineffably as right as it would in Bach, Handel, or Haydn. The comparison may seem odd, but it did not at the time. Nor, I think, would it have done so to Nietzsche. 

Tristan und Isolde, Oper Leipzig, 5 October 2019

Leipzig Opera House

Tristan (Daniel Kirch) and Isolde (Meagan Miller)
Images: Tom Schulze

Tristan – Daniel Kirch

Isolde – Meagan Miller

King Marke – Sebastian Pilgrim

Kurwenal – Jukka Rasilainen

Melot – Matthias Stier

Brangäne – Barbara Kozelj

Shepherd – Martin Petzold

Steersman – Franz Xaver Schlecht

Young Sailor – Alvaro Zambrano

Enrico Lübbe (director)

Torsten Buß (co-director)

Étienne Pluss (set designs)

Linda Redlin (costumes)

fettFilm (video)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Nele Winter (dramaturgy)

Leipzig Opera Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Ulf Schirmer (conductor)

Sailors and Kurwenal (Jukka Rasilainen)

Leipzig’s relationship with its greatest son has never been easy, nor should it have been. Wagner, in all his glorious and inglorious contradictions, is too complicated, problematical, and interesting to be reduced to mere hero-worship; or, as Theodor Adorno put it, ‘progress and reaction in Wagner’s music cannot be separated as sheep from goats’. There has been – arguably, still is – enough of that in Bayreuth, anyway. Many Wagner productions of what we may broadly think of as the Regietheater era have acknowledged that: Rings from Joachim Herz to Frank Castorf and beyond, Parsifal and Meistersinger stagings too. Of the music dramas, however, Tristan has seemed more resistant to problematisation, deconstructive or otherwise. Rare examples with some degree of success have included Peter Konwitschny’s old Munich production and, more fully, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2018 staging for Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the latter loudly denounced by most, yet for me fruitful in its alienation. Ultimately, Tristan’s problems seem different: more a matter of balance between drama as conventionally understood and that metaphysical drama of the Schopenhauerian Will and representation which Wagner, for one, certainly came to see as the work’s true core. Or is it, perhaps, that one needs to look and indeed to listen more closely, more subtly, for the fissures of a modernity that no one has ever seriously been able to deny this most singular of works?

Isolde and Tristan

The question remains open, I think. In the meantime – we shall likely ever remain in that meantime – Oper Leipzig has steadily been renewing its Wagner roster. This new Tristan production arises from a welcome Leipzig collaboration with the Intendant at the city’s Schauspiel, Enrico Lübbe, and his deputy, Torsten Buss. Fundamental to the staging is a ship(wreck): the location, in a relatively straightforward realistic sense, of the first act, yet also a focus for memories, dreams, psychological states and philosophical ideas brought into being. Each act has the same basic setting, yet is seen from a different standpoint, in a different state of repair, on a different scale, so as to enable the quasi-symphonic emergence of unity in diversity, ultimately cyclical, as perhaps befits a nineteenth-century work, in a final, post-Liebestod return by Tristan and Isolde to a pristine ship, never previously seen – and perhaps never having existed – in that state. In its second-act ruins, we appreciate not only our construction of connections, but crucially, our capacity for imagination.

Brangäne (Barbara Kozelj) and Isolde

So too does Tristan, who, during Isolde’s initial confrontation with him, soon regresses to the role of a child, even an unborn one, lying in foetal fashion, as if to recapture the essence of a relationship he never consciously experienced first time around, his mother having died during childbirth. Is it his imagination, then, that creates the multiplying Isolde figures during the love duet? What do they signify? There is an aimlessness, an unsatisfactory nature to them, which may hint at dashing of romantic hopes long since foretold, psychoanalytically. There is something, moreover, of the delirium we encounter more fully in the third act, to the way people, settings, thoughts, and even narratives drift in and out of consciousness. Can one, should one, begin to piece them together? Temptation is unavoidable; the production seems to encourage it. A nagging doubt nonetheless remains, like the contemporary, or at least Adornian, nagging doubt concerning Wagnerian totality. It is Tristan und Isolde, of course, not Tristan oder Isolde; the celebrated second-act discussion of ‘diese süße Wörtlein: “und”’ is often understood to offer a conceptual key to the work. And yet, Tristan will tear off his bandages, will he not? In what sense are the two ever truly united? Is the union we witness at the close of this production noumenal, phenomenal, or a sham?

Tristan and Isolde

Oppositions will always play a crucial part in Tristan, above all that between night and day; it would be strange if that did not in some sense feature in a staging. It certainly does here, for instance when the stage turns almost, yet not quite, black – part of the ship may still just be perceived – after drinking of the potion and, again, during the love duet. Night, even then, is a creation: of Tristan and Isolde; of the ship, as foundation and locus of the drama; of Wagner; of the performer; of the audience; and so forth. That we wish the dimly perceptible set to disappear entirely is symptomatic: Romantic illusion and delusion are ours, as well as the characters', as well as Wagner’s. Perhaps, then, we did need to watch and listen more subtly. One might think of this as a collaboration between different forms of light: lighting and video, as well as those entrusted with it (Olaf Freese and Torge Møller of fettFilm); Freese in the programme booklet refers to a ‘Zusammenspiel [interplay] von Licht und Video’. Film, just as much as set design, creates and disintegrates the ship - at least until the close. Likewise, we might say, there are collaboration and, more dramatically, interplay between realism and abstraction; between the individual psychological of chamber theatre – often chamber music, too – and metaphysical symbolism; and, of particular importance to this production, between sea-voyage and its fateful, fatal culmination, symbolised by the image of a ship, perhaps as shipwreck, as its own graveyard, somewhere between stagnant and dead. It should move, yet it does not; rather our gaze moves, or is moved for us by the design team, and more broadly, the production. Our souls, similarly, are moved, or should be, by Wagner’s great Greek Chorus of the orchestra.


Visual and, more specifically, design values are strongly to the fore, yet not for their own sake, as mere backdrop, but as a portal to the dramatic and conceptual. One may think this a Seelenlandschaft (‘landscape of the soul’), as Lübbe describes it, not least when the excellent English horn player, Gundel Jannemann-Fischer, wanders across the stage, a different figure from the Shepherd: a relationship that may perhaps be understood in terms of Schopenhauerian aesthetics and implicit critique or at least (typically Wagnerian) extension thereof. The alte Weise is far more than something the Shepherd plays, yet Wagner would have considered that all the more justification for concealment of the player. Granting the instrument personification, albeit in gentle, non-provocative fashion, both heightens the importance of music and also lightly nods to a twentieth-century world of music theatre, even of post-Holocaust antagonism to idealist totality. Whatever the truth of that – one soon finds one is tied in knots – it is surely the case that even such a quasi-Schopenhauerian relationship may only be accomplished by parallel or, ideally, Hegelian-dialectical communication and understanding of, if not its negation, then at least its inversion; that is, by nurturing also a sense of soul in landscape, in Nature. It was a Romantic reading, ultimately, that I gleaned, as befits an ultimately Romantic work.

Isolde and Brangäne

Much to ponder, then, which is far from always the case in a Tristan staging. Unfortunately, musical fortunes proved patchier, above all from Wagner’s aforementioned tragic Chorus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and its conductor, Ulf Schirmer. The orchestra has a wealth of Wagnerian experience to call upon; this was no vintage night, however, with some strikingly careless and non-committal playing and only intermittent presence of its distinctive, ‘old German’ tone. Schirmer’s direction certainly did not help, especially in the first act, whose form had yet to be mastered. The opening Prelude seemed to go on forever: not on account of tempo as such, but of a lack of unifying ‘unendliche Melodie’, vertically and horizontally. A striking lack of chemistry between orchestra and conductor may have betokened an off-night; it was nevertheless concerning, given that Schirmer is no visiting conductor, but the opera’s General Music Director and Intendant. As is often the case, ‘traditional’ cuts did their distorting work; neither sole nor even principal responsibility, however, lay with them. Ingolf Barchmann’s bass clarinet deserves a mention for its roving, malevolent, harmonically destabilising contributions.

King Marke (Sebastian Pilgrim) and
Melot (Matthias Stier)

There was more to enjoy vocally, though here the picture was also mixed. Most singers improved as the evening went on, Daniel Kirch’s Tristan fully coming into its own in a highly impressive third act. Too much in the way of first-act barking gave way, ironically, to a more lyrical style. Given that many tenors struggle to make their way through the work in one piece, perhaps this was a matter of first-night nerves and issues of pacing; dramatic instinct and technical ability were certainly present. Meagan Miller’s lyrical, touchingly human Isolde occasionally sounded overwhelmed, yet for the most part offered – and contributed - much. Barbara Koselj’s Brangäne offered the most consistently impressive vocal performance, as unfailingly intelligent as her subtly expressive gesture. Jukka Rasilainen struggled as Kurwenal in the first act, bluff and dry of tone, but recovered markedly in the third. Sebastian Pilgrim made a fine impression as King Marke, sonorous of tone and, again, unquestionably human. Smaller parts were all well sung and acted, Alvaro Zambrano’s Young Sailor in particular catching the ear. (He also, unusually, appeared briefly on stage.) Had there been more consistent collaboration with this chamber-drama sphere from ‘metaphysical’ orchestra and conductor – the opposition is, of course, not precise – the wholeness of the evening’s experience would undoubtedly have been furthered. Yet even in that (relative) lack, one was led to think about the desirability or otherwise of totalising intoxication. Nietzsche’s opus metaphysicum, its score only to be read when wearing gloves, may not always have been fully realised; in a deeper, yes metaphysical, sense, it remained untamed as ever.

Happy New Year!

Opolais/Gewandhaus/Nelsons - Dzenītis, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler, 9 October 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Andris Dzenītis: Māra (United Kingdom premiere)

Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades, op.68: ‘I am worn out with grief’

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin, op.24: Polonaise and Letter Scene

Mahler: Symphony no.1 in D major

Kristine Opolais (soprano)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

After the relative disappointment of the first of these two Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts, that disappointment relating to Andris Nelsons’s conducting rather than the orchestra itself, there came a second chance. I wish I could say that I had responded more warmly. There were, as before, sections of the concert to which I could – and did. However, Nelsons’s Mahler ultimately proved no more convincing than it had before, the final movement of the First Symphony as vulgar and uncomprehending a display as I have heard for a long time. An audience that once again seemed to value excellence of orchestral execution and sheer volume of sound rather than formal, interpretative coherence clearly felt otherwise. Again I thought of Beecham: ‘the English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes’. Perhaps Nelsons qualifies as an Englishman too, at least when it comes to Mahler.

His taste in new music seems odd too. Try as I might, I could not make anything much of Andris Dzenītis’s Māra – although, as ever, with a new work, that may well just have been my fault. Its first performance had been given by the same forces in Leipzig five days earlier; this performance certainly sounded committed and incisive. The title apparently refers to a notion of divine omnipotence: according to the programme note, ‘the entire physical, visible, audible and tangible world, the materialisation of all spiritual power’. Dzenītis can certainly write for an orchestra in a ‘traditional’, more or less Franco-Russian way: the quarter of an hour or so piece proved ‘colourful’, ‘ritualistic’, ‘pictorial’, ‘dramatic’, and so on, in predictable, generic fashion. Certain passages grabbed the attention: repeated pitches redolent of Morse Code, repeated figures that briefly offered something intriguingly hypnotic. What it all added up to, though, I could not say. ‘Eclectic’ would be one way of putting it, so too ‘at least twice as long as it need have been’. A solo bass clarinet solo at the close may or may not have held some programmatic meaning. According to the note, the piece allowed ‘runes to become visible in the score’. Perhaps they were audible too; I am afraid I have no idea.

Tchaikovsky made much more sense to me, Kristine Opolais on superlative form. In Liza’s third-act arioso from The Queen of Spades and the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin, she truly brought to life her characters, without context, scenery, or titles. One knew and felt what Liza and Tatiana meant, what their plight was – and could have taken dictation, verbal or musical, from her. Hers were fully gestural performances too, very much those of a classic singing actress. The Gewandhaus Orchestra ‘spoke’ splendidly too: this, after all, is an orchestra that plays for the Leipzig Opera as well as the concert hall (and the Thomaskirche). If only Nelsons and/or Opolais had not indulged in quite so extreme gear changes towards the end of the Letter Scene, and if only he had not driven the Polonaise so hard, these would have been ideal performances. No one, however, would have been seriously disappointed.

The first movement of the Mahler symphony opened with great promise: opening string harmonics (and their later repetition) spot on, without sounding clinical, woodwind full of colour and character, offstage brass as well balanced as I can recall. There was first-rate audience bronchial interjection too, for which many thanks. Later on, an overall freshness of spirit was apt, winning, invigorating. Antiphonally placed first and second violins worked a magic that was little short of revelatory, whilst the tender tone of the Leipzig horn consort was simply to die for. Soon, however, Nelsons began to mould the music excessively, leaving one longing for the ideal of a Kubelík. (Few are the occasions when that conductor proves anything but ideal!) Climaxes grew more and more brash, in quite un-Mahlerian fashion, once again suggestive of a conductor more at home with Shostakovich. Formal coherence had soon gone quite out of the window too.

The Ländler likewise opened well: as vigorous, as earthy as I have heard, the Leipzig strings digging deep indeed. As it progressed, however, it seemed too determined by rhythm, too little by harmony: this should not be a zero-sum game. There was alienation in the Trio, if not quite enough, the material often sounding oddly close to Bruckner. Irony does not seem Nelsons’s strong suit. Nor was it so in the third movement, its weird echoes of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream apparently in spite of the conductor rather than on his account. There was no gainsaying, however, the excellence of the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s soloists here. It was a pity that Nelsons pulled around the Klezmer and other contrasting material so wildly; soon it made no sense at all, a mere succession of moments. One could hardly have wanted a louder, more emphatic opening to the finale; many of us indeed might have wished for something less ear-splitting. Such, however, was to be the order of the day, with extreme contrast that had the audience ‘excited’ in its seats. I felt merely bludgeoned. Had there been something in the way of formal coherence, it would not have been quite so bad; in its absence, this glorious movement felt interminable. Bizarre tempo changes added further frustration. What a waste of a great orchestra.

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’.

Gewandhaus/Pinnock - Haydn, The Seasons, 28 April 2017

Grosser Saal, Leipzig Gewandhaus

Christina Landshamer (soprano)

Daniel Behle (tenor)

Michael Nagy (baritone)

Gewandhaus Choir, Dresden Chamber Choir (chorus master: Edwards Caswell)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Trevor Pinnock (conductor)

 

A much discussed – and much praised – recent recording of The Seasons has been that from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli forces. I have not heard it yet, although I wrote the booklet note; a copy is, I believe, awaiting me on a brief return to the United (sic) Kingdom next month. However, I know that it is sung in English, and on the grandest – authentic in the proper sense – scale. Trevor Pinnock’s Leipzig Gewandhaus performance was, naturally, sung in German, and with small forces: strings 10.8.7.4.4, and two small choirs coming together to make one chorus. What may occasionally have been lost in grandeur, though – this was definitely more Marriner than Karajan – offered compensations in terms of intimacy (not, of course, that we should fall for the canard that such need be lacking in larger-scale performances).

 

What perhaps surprised me was that Pinnock’s way with Haydn’s score was often somewhat Romantic (in the more popular sense, rather than necessarily having anything much to do with the nineteenth century). Tempi were rarely rushed, if anything, slightly – occasionally more than slightly – on the slower side, with more than a little lingering in certain cases. For instance, relaxation in the first number, during the orchestral interlude between Lukas’s and Hanne’s words, was greater than I can recall hearing, but convincing, even delightful. Pinnock generally, as, for example, in the following chorus, ‘Komm, holder Lenz!’ shaped the music nicely, without moulding it unduly. Rhythms could be perky, well sprung, when called for too, as in ‘Schon eilet froh der Ackermann’, which also benefited from some ear-catching piccolo playing ( Alexander Koval, a member of the orchestra’s Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy). Indeed, woodwind colour was very much to the fore throughout, solo flautist, Sébastian Jacot and solo oboist, Philippe Tondre time and time again delighting the ear and heightening one’s musical perception. In the Spinning Song, woodwind solos sounded unusually present, as ‘relief’, against the darker, proto-Weberian, even proto–Wagnerian, whirring of the wheel. The pictorial elements were vivid, self-explanatory, so much so that, at times, one almost need not have listened to the words, but not at the expense of line and flow. What a relief, moreover, it was to have intelligent, interesting continuo playing (Michael Schönheit, the Gewandhausorganist, on fortepiano) that was not of the exhibitionistic ‘look at me’ school. (Let us hope that that fad passes soon.)

 

There were a very few occasions when the string tone was a little thinner than might have been ideal; Simon’s aria at the beginning of Summer was one, following a finely veiled (vibrato withdrawn) introduction. More often than not, though, the litheness we heard in the very opening number proved far from antithetical to warmth and cultivation. Perhaps Pinnock’s concentration, or communication thereof, was nodding a little in those early minutes of Summer, for the soloists’ lead-up to Sun’s full majesty was a little sluggish. Thereafter, though, in that Trio and Chorus, majesty and thrills were in full supply. Timpanist Mathias Müller, chose his sticks and general approach carefully: this was anything but a one-size-fits-all approach, as befits so vividly colourful, temporally (and climatically) transforming a score. the distant thunder in Simon’s recitative, ‘O seht! Es steiget in der schwülen Luft’ a case in point. I loved the general uncanniness in that calm before the storm, which then came, if not quite de profundis, then certainly out of the dark. The way, moreover, in which the music picked itself up, as it were, with Lukas’s ‘Die düst’ren Wolken trennen sich’ was spot on: credit both to Daniel Behle, orchestra, and conductor. When tempi were swifter than ‘traditional’, as in the Chorus in Praise of Industry, the result was light of foot rather than uncomfortably driven.

 

Behle’s relatively light tenor did not lack depth or seriousness when called upon. It matched well Christina Landsamer’s soprano, possessed of equal clarity and cleanness of line, although sometimes a little unclear of diction. Both are undoubtedly intelligent, musical artists. Michael Nagy’s baritone was for me the vocal highlight, its richness never an end in itself, but the foundation for a wide variety indeed of tonal variegation. At one extreme would be the splendidly grey monotone (if that should not be a complete contradiction in terms) on ‘steht er, unbewegt, der Stein,’ as befitted the words. His sadness at the beginning of Winter – Pinnock’s very slow tempi offering striking contrast with Lukas’s Aria, ‘Hier steht der Wand’rer nun’ – approached hopelessness yet did not capitulate. Even in that relative pallor of tone, there was beauty: Winter indeed, one might say. Choral singing offered many of the same virtues, clear throughout, weightier at the ‘big’ moments, ably supported by resplendent brass (and the rest of the orchestra, of course). If I had my doubts about Pinnock’s brisk, even martial beginning to the final number, more contrast, it seemed, than climax, the stereophony of Haydn’s eight-part choral writing, a question-and-answer cross between The Magic Flute and Israel in Egypt, banished them as swiftly as it did those winter clouds of old age.

Der Freischütz, Oper Leipzig, 4 March 2017

Leipzig Opera House

Samiel (Verena Hierholzer) and Kaspar (Tuomas Pursio)
Images: © Ida Zenna

 

Agathe – Gal James

Ännchen – Magdalena Hinterdobler
Samiel – Verena Hierholzer
Max – Thomas Mohr
Kaspar – Tuomas Pursio
Kuno – Jürgen Kurth
Kilian – Patrick Vogel
Ottokar – Jonathan Michie
Hermit – Rúni Brattaberg
First Hunter – Andreas David
Second Hunter – Klaus Bernewitz
Bridesmaids – Katrin Braunlich, Estelle Haussner, Eliza Rudnicka, Teresa Maria Winkler
 

Christian von Göltz (director)

Dieter Richter (set designs)
Jessica Karge (costumes)
Heidi Zippel (dramaturgy)
Verena Hierholzer (Samiel’s choreography)

Leipzig Opera Chorus (chorus master: Alexander Stessing)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Christian Gedschold (conductor)

 

Agathe (Gal James) in front of the assembled company

‘It seems to be the poem of those Bohemian woods themselves, whose dark and solemn aspect permits us at once to grasp how the isolated man would believe himself, if not prey to a dæmonic power of Nature, then at least in eternal submission thereto.’ With those words, the homesick, indigent Richard Wagner, revolted by what he had experienced as the base superficiality of Parisian musical culture, reported on an 1841 performance of Le Freischütz (Berlioz’s version, with ballet music that was at least Weber’s own). In a piece addressed ‘to the Paris public’, Wagner ostensibly tried to explain the work to that public, yet seemed unable to prevent himself from turning his article into an attack upon – yes, you have guessed correctly – Parisian and, more broadly, French culture.

Kaspar, Samiel and her spirits, Max (Thomas Mohr)

 

The Freischütz (most certainly Der) we know and love is the quintessential German Romantic opera, and Wagner’s advocacy has played no little role in that. Upon returning to Saxony, to Dresden, he assumed a leading role in the longstanding if hitherto unsuccessful campaign to have Weber’s bones returned from London and reburied in the city whose German opera (as opposed to its long-flourishing Italian version) he had done much to build. Wagner eulogised his predecessor with music and a flowery address, proclaiming that there had never been a more German musician. Whilst the younger Wagner had stood far more critical, his first opera, Die Feen notwithstanding, of Weber and earlier German opera, now he placed his work in that tradition, as would others theirs. That is far from nonsense, of course, yet it is also far from unproblematical. For one thing, it is impossible, living in the face of what Friedrich Meinecke called in 1948 the ‘German catastrophe’, to assent to such nationalism any more, however differently it may have been intended. For another, much of Weber’s music, still more than Wagner’s, and perhaps still more in this than in Weber’s subsequent two ‘German Romantic’ operas, often questions, even resists, such identification.

Kaspar and Max

 

Why do I mention all that? Because it was very much in that spirit that, almost whether I wished to or no, I approached this new production of Weber’s opera in Wagner’s home city (itself long ambivalent concerning its greatest son, its concert tradition long, somewhat frustratingly, enjoying a higher profile to the fruits of its still lengthier operatic history). What struck me upon hearing the Overture from the excellent Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Christian Gedschold was, first, how fresh, how vernal (it had been a beautiful, almost spring-day in Leipzig) Weber’s score sounded from every section: the strings an ideal combination of the golden and something darker, the woodwind at times heartbreakingly characterful, almost as if partaking as woodland creatures in Wagner’s fancy, the brass as euphonious as one could hope for, horns tender to a degree. And yet, Gedschold’s direction did not, for me, take its place in the tradition I think of here as ‘German Romantic’: at least not wholeheartedly, or perhaps it was my mindset that had me hear it differently. Where Furtwängler, in his outstanding Salzburg life recording, puts us momentarily at peace, and has it, perhaps, sound more ‘German’ than the music ‘in itself’ always is, where Carlos Kleiber somehow makes his objectively hard-driven Dresden account sound equally at ease with itself, breathing where the tempi might suggest otherwise, this performance sounded more internationalist, perhaps even more at home with the French models Weber – and Wagner – so eagerly adopted in individual numbers. (I mean here a number of the arias and ensemble pieces, although even the Huntsmen’s Chorus, soon to become a staple of German books of allegedly ‘popular song’, actually derives from part of an eighteenth-century French street song, ‘Malbrouk s’en va t’en guerre’.) What sometimes, then, I missed in the seemingly unaffected German Romanticism that would grow into Wagnerian music drama an aural reassessment of the work as the number opera it undoubtedly is.



Opening scene

 

It was with such thoughts that I also set about watching Christian von Götz’s production, in part, I think, on account of his brilliantly thought-provoking Capriccio, in which Strauss’s work engaged with its own time to an extent, and to a fruitful extent, rarely seen. (Such are the perils, as well as the joys, of reception, whether of a composer, a director, or anyone else!) Perhaps, then, I was too preoccupied with understanding what I saw as part commentary on German history, but this is perhaps one of those works in which such a path is inevitable, and ultimately requires no apology. What struck me from its later nineteenth-century setting was how it enables, perhaps even invites, one to consider the work’s Rezeptionsgeschichte. Indeed, to begin with, I understood it more as a deliberately sanitised version of the period of composition, the hunting lodge too spick and span, even too grand (rather as one might visit such a place touristically today, or indeed in the later nineteenth century). Be that as it may, such sanitisation, displacement, alienation, however one might consider it, served to remember the work such as it never was, even if we have ‘always’ known it as such, something of a ghost, setting the scene for what became still more of a ghost story than one often sees.

 

Ännchen (Magdalena Hinterdobler), Agathe, and Samiel

It is here, though, a ghost story with a very particular twist, or at least standpoint. Looking at, if not listening to, Weber from a standpoint not so distant from Mahler (recall Die drei Pintos) and his world – the designs hint as much at Franz Joseph and Bad Ischl as at the Bohemian Woods, at least until we briefly enter the latter – we begin to understand the centrality of female experience to the horror tale unfolding. Fear and hysteria reign, Samiel – here, strikingly, a self-choreographed female dancer, Verena Hierholzer – seemingly a projection of some evil deed from the past, haunting the present, just as untruths from our retelling of history continue to haunt us. (Whatever the tribulations of German history, it is the English who do not have a word for Vergangenheitsbewältigung, resulting recently in a catastrophe that could hardly seem more likely over here.) Noting that the opera was originally to be called Die Jägersbraut, the director plays on Agathe’s fear of marriage, a fear born, it seems, of living in so unhappy, so haunted, a place. Samiel’s delivery of the funeral crown in the third act terrifies all the women; is it not, however, actually the perfect symbol for patriarchal hegemony and the fantasies it encourages? If the horror-film imagery of Samiel’s other appearances seemed more silly than anything else, perhaps it is all too easy for a man to say that in the face of female agency. (I am questioning myself more as Devil’s Advocate here than because I really think so, but the openness of the staging to such self-criticism is perhaps not the least of its strengths.)

Max and Agathe

 

Such would in itself count for much less, had it not been for an excellent cast, whose performances would have graced any stage. If Thomas Mohr, I am afraid to say, looked and acted too much on the old side for Max – however one might have framed the performance – his vocal delivery more than compensated. A tenor bright and clear, yet sensitive too, he complemented very well the sopranos of Gal James and Magdalena Hinterdobler, exhibiting many of the same qualities, and with fine coloratura to boot, Hinterdobler’s especially expressive as well as merely impressive. Tuomas Pursio’s darkly dangerous Kaspar stood very much in the line of other fine performances I have heard him give (from Wagner to Nono), yet there was nothing generic about the malady of his pride and delusion. Jürgen Kurth and Jonathan Michie offered intelligent, verbally acute performances as Kuno and Ottokar, whilst Patrick Vogel’s lighter, nimbler tenor (by comparison with Max) offered ample indication of why he might have won the title of king of the marksmen. Rúni Brattaberg’s dark, sonorous Hermit did what he should, although why anyone should necessarily take heed of the character’s words remains something of a dramaturgical mystery. Choral singing throughout spoke of music well known, 'in the blood', if you will, yet never taken for granted: it was as fresh as it was 'traditional'.

Final scene

 

There was then, plenty, of opportunity to rethink, to reassess, wherever that impulse may have originated. And yet, for everything I have said, and for all the outstanding quality of orchestral instruments’ ‘French’ solo moments (of which there are many), it remained the dark, undeniably Wagnerian tones of the Wolf’s Glen that made the deepest impression of all. Here, Saxon tradition spoke of an orchestra, one of the greatest in the world, that knew where this music led, and which was happy to guide us. Göltz made a better job of staging frankly impossible scenic directions than many (‘Gothic’ horror notwithstanding), but Weber’s extraordinary presentiments of Siegfried remained an aural experience above all. Wagner’s truths may not always be empirical; that does not necessarily render them untruths.