Musikfest Berlin (5) – SWR SO/Rundel - Schumann, Andre, Marenzio, Vicentino, and Nono, 11 September 2017

Philharmonie, Berlin

 

Images: Kai Bienert

Schumann – Manfred, op.115: Overture

Mark Andre – über, for clarinet, orchestra, and live electronics
Luca Marenzio – Ninth Book of Madrigals: ‘Crudele, acerba, inesorabil morte’
Nicola Vicentino – Fifth Book of Madrigals: ‘L’aura che’l verde lauro et l’aureo crine’
Nono – Il canto sospeso

Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

Laura Aikin (soprano)

Jenny Carlstedt (mezzo-soprano)

Robin Tritschler (tenor)

SWR Experimentalstudio

Michael Acker, Joachim Haas, and Sven Kestel (sound design)

SWR Vocal Ensemble (chorus master: Michael Alber)

SWR Symphony Orchestra

Peter Rundel (conductor)

A programme that promised much and, ultimately, ‘delivered’ – as they now say. The main attraction was Nono’s Il canto sospeso: one of the undisputed masterpieces of what I am still old-fashioned enough to call the post-war avant garde. I have been waiting twenty years or so to hear it ‘live’, since I first listened, astonished and terrified, to Claudio Abbado’s live Berlin recording: made, according to a declaration in the booklet note from Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, ‘when ‘Germany … three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is once again in the grip of an increasing hatred of “foreigners”,’ when, across Europe, ‘nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism are once more on the increase’. The recording was ‘intended as a message on the part of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Claudio Abbado that we condemn all brutality and resurgent violence against people who think differently and that we do so from the very bottom of our hearts,’ Il canto sospeso being ‘music born of deep dismay, painful and accusing’. Plus ça change… Except that, without wishing to minimise the poison from the German far Right – recently addressed by and cheering Nigel Farage – much of the rest of Europe (and the United States) now stands in a far more parlous state. Angela Merkel and Luigi Nono: strange bedfellows, to put it mildly, but they are or were both adults, willing to speak out.

 

Every work of Nono’s, he said, required a provocation: ‘The genesis of any of my works is always to be found in a human “provocation”: an event, an experience, a test in our lives, which provokes my instinct and my consciousness, as man and musician, to bear witness.’ Each of the texts we hear – here in the standard German translation of the original Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza europea – is testimony to and from a resistance fighter shortly to be killed by the Nazis. It is the eloquence of this music, which ‘speaks’ or ‘sings’, almost irrespective of whether it be actually vocal or otherwise, which bears witness here – and so it did. Peter Rundel and the SWR SO (the first time I have heard the orchestra since its despicable forced merger) gave a performance that seemed to me to lie very much in the line of Nono’s Second Viennese School inheritance: not just Webern, although he was certainly there, but his (posthumous) father-in-law Schoenberg too. (As Nono declared, in a lecture on A Survivor from Warsaw, it stood as ‘the musical-æsthetic manifesto of our era. What Jean-Paul Sartre says in his essay, What is Literature?, about the problem ‘why write?’, is witnessed in utterly authentic fashion in Schoenberg’s creative necessity.’) This was glowing post-Romanticism: painful, even agonising, in its beauty, as it should be, nowhere more so than in the sixth movement, when, after what I think of as a choral Dies irae without (metaphysical) end – the testimony of Esther Srul – orchestral music so horrendously beguiles us. Words, witness, their horror – for which many thanks must also go to the soloists and choir – continue to resist their aestheticisation, however ravishing, say, the melismata of Laura Aikin or the Webern aria-with-ensemble of Robin Tritschker’s preceding number (Chaim, a fourteen-year-old Jew from Galicia). We await, wish for, reconciliation, even benediction, but know, with Nono and Adorno, that it can never happen. The final silence truly terrified. It would, perhaps, have been better if we had had no applause, although I understand why we did.

 

The rest of the programming was intelligent: a model of its kind, to set the Nono in relief. I had a few qualms about it in practice, though. The Schumann Manfred Overture – an important work for Nono, not least in his use of the ‘Manfred chord’ in Prometeo – was played with a great deal of nervous energy, but somewhat at the expense of what else makes this very difficult piece work. Rundel drove very hard and Schumann’s music lost much of its humanity – and, I think, its sense. The two Venetian madrigals suffered in a different way. I am certainly no fundamentalist on such matters, and was intrigued to hear them sung by a chamber choirs, as opposed to by soloists. There was a smoothness, however, especially to Marenzio’s Crudele, acerba, inesorabil morte, which seemed to me both somewhat to fail the piece and to fail as preparation for Nono. Beauty, yes, but not blandness, is required here.

 

As for Mark Andre’s 2015 über, for clarinet, orchestra, and live electronics, I am afraid I found myself rather at a loss. I liked the idea, insofar as I understood it, and Jörg Widmann certainly offered compelling showmanship as the soloist. But it seemed to me a very drawn out, often featureless, counterpart to an extended (!) Bruckner slow movement. The aural waves I heard promised much – and seemed to allude to Nono and Venice, above all to Prometeo (or at least, in this context, could be understood in that way). There were beautiful sounds to be heard; the blurring of boundaries between clarinet, electronics, and other instruments and their electronic transformation, allured. Had I not known there was no glass harmonica present, I should have sworn at one point that there was. Shadow worlds posed intriguing questions as to what was shadowing what. What did it all add up to, though? Perhaps I needed to hear it again; however, much as I should have liked to be convinced, I was not on this occasion. And it is the Nono work, which I had waited so long to hear, that now I need to hear again. So does the world in which we live, alas.

 

'Io morirò d’Amore’: La Compagnia del Madrigale: Marenzio, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo, 7 February 2016

Wigmore Hall

 

Marenzio – Io morirò d’Amore

Monteverdi – Anima mia, perdona
Gesualdo – T’amo mia vita
Marenzio – Cruda Amarilli
Monteverdi – Ecco mormorar l’onde
Marenzio – Filli, volgendo i lumi
Gesualdo – O dolorosa gioia
Marenzio – Dura legge d’Amor
Gesualdo – O dolce mio tesoro
Monteverdi – Ecco, Silvio, colei
Gesualdo – Al mio gioir il ciel si fa sereno
Monteverdi – Dolcemente dormiva la mia Clori
Marenzio – Vivrò dunque lontano
Gesualdo – Chiaro risplender suole
Monteverdi – Cruda Amarilli
Gesualdo – Moro lasso al mio duolo

Rossana Bertini, Francesca Cassinari (sopranos)

Elena Carzaniga (contralto)
Giuseppe Maletto (tenor)
Raffaele Giordani, Daniele Carnovich (basses)
 

There was no doubting the musical and verbal acuity of these performances from La Compagnia del Madrigale, making their Wigmore Hall debut here. I struggled to put my finger on what I felt might have been missing; the audience certainly responded warmly, and I felt that I learned a great deal both from the programming and the performances. It would be foolish, of course, to expect madrigals such as these to blaze in the same way that, for instance, Monteverdi’s later, concerted works do. Perhaps that was part of my difficulty; perhaps it was also a matter of my own lack of intimacy with the Italian language, for these are unquestionably ‘literary’, connoisseur’s pieces, in which understanding the meaning of the words is only a small part of the battle. All of which is really a way of saying that, if at times I felt a little more enthusiastic than many, if at times I longed for a little more of the way in almost clichéd ‘Italianate’ colour, the fault most likely lay with me rather than with the performances.

 

Luca Marenzio’s Io morirò d’Amore gave its name to the concert as a whole, and made for a splendid intrada. The idea of proceeding to die for love coloured the texts and much of the music of what followed. There was an overwhelming sadness, lightly worn yet unmistakeable, to Monteverdi’s Anima mia, perdona, one of a number of settings of Giovanni Battista Guarini. I was put in mind, not for the last time, of the composer’s Orfeo, seemingly but a stone’s throw away. The singers’ colouring of individual notes and phrases, here and elsewhere, seemed to fit seamlessly into awareness and communication of the shape of the poem and its setting. Gesualdo’s T’amo mia vita, also a Guarini setting, offered pleasing musico-poetic symmetry – ‘“T’amo mia vita” la mia cara vita’ – within a life that had been lived. That madrigal and the ensuing Marenzio Cruda Amarilli (Guarini again), offered a variety of vocal textures, again within a convincing poetic whole; the performance of the latter was beautifully unhurried, indeed ‘aristocratic’, to use that almost unavoidable word.

 

For me, it was Monteverdi’s Tasso setting from his Second Book, Ecco mormorar l’onde, which was perhaps the highlight of the concert: we witnessed, it seemed, a strange, quickening marriage, in work and performance, between tradition and innovation. Already, with the advantage and disadvantage of hindsight, there stood hear the father of musical modernity, at least as strongly entitled to that accolade as Haydn. And yet, there was courtliness too. The whole world seemed a stage. The individuality and complementarity of voices, again in work and in performance, contributed greatly to our enchantment.

 

Chiaroscuro was much on my mind in Marenzio’s Filli, volgendo i lumi, continuing with Tasso, in an almost painterly performance. The sado-masochism of Gesualdo’s text in O dolorosa gioia was matched and, I think, pierced by his musical chromaticism; more than once, I thought not only of crucifixion but also of the sweet assurance of atonement. The final compositional and performative twist on ‘vivo’ was something surely to be relished. Finally, in the first half, Marenzio’s Petrarch setting, Dura legge d’Amor! Had us feel the harshness of its title and text without exaggeration: courtly lovesickness, one might say. Collegiality and amorous sparring were hallmarks of the performance, within an overarching context of the melancholic. The words ‘Come senza languir si more e langue’ offered a desolate close indeed.

 

Gesualdo returned after the interval, with his O dolce mio tesoro. I loved tracking the progress, often eccentric, of individual lines in relation to others, all within the framework of the composer’s bizarre mood-swings. ‘Romantic’? Maybe, maybe not. At any rate, the strangeness was brought subtly to life. Monteverdi’s lengthy Guarini setting (Book V), Ecco, Silvio, colei was subtly – that word again – and persuasively shaped. It was here, above all, that I missed something a little stronger, more interventionist; however, as I said, I suspect that the performers were in the right and that I simply need to immerse myself more in this repertoire. Two of the three Gesualdo settings remaining, Al mio gioir il ciel si fa sereno and Chiaro risplender suole, benefited from warm precision: a faithful guide through compositional surprises. Monteverdi’s Dolcemente dormiva la mia Clori and Cruda Amarilli (a nice counterpart to Marenzio’s setting, heard in the first half) offered a multiplicity of ‘voices’, even of emotions; but quite rightly, one had to make the effort as listener to hear them all. A rich-toned performance of Marenzio’s rich-toned Vivrò dunque lontanto was clearly founded, again rightly, upon verbal nuance.

Finally, we heard Gesualdo’s Moro lasso al mio duolo. Its opening chromaticism – if we can call it that, I know… – led to still stranger music, reminding me of the composer’s attraction for Stravinsky. Quite what one should make of it, I am not at all sure, but its instability was subtly – again – represented, without any need of exaggeration. In the spirit of the concert as a whole, the performers paid Gesualdo the compliment of treating his madrigal as music rather than as effect.

 

 

 

Les Arts Florissants/Agnew: Monteverdi, First Book of Madrigals, etc., 13 October 2011

Union Chapel

Monteverdi – Lapidabant Stephanum
Vecchi – Ardo sì, ma non t’amo
Riposta: Arda e gela à tua voglia
Monteverdi – Quando sperai del mio servir mercede
Raggi dov’e’l moi bene
Ingegneri – Ardo sì, ma non t’amo
Ardi e gela à tua voglia
Marenzio – A che tormi il ben moi
Questa ordi il laccio
Monteverdi – Ardo sì, ma non t’amo
Ardi e gela a tua voglia
Arsi e alsi a mia voglia
Madrigals: Book One


Les Arts Florissants, under the directorship of Paul Agnew, are performing a complete cycle of Monteverdi madrigals across Europe between 2011 and 2014. This concert took in the first book but, given its relative brevity, offered a first half setting that collection, published in 1587, in historical context. And so, we heard the first piece from Monteverdi’s first publication, ‘Lapidabant Stephanum’ from the 1582 Sacrae cantiunculae tribus vocibus, followed by a brief spoken introduction from Agnew and other madrigals from 1583-7.

I think it might have taken me quite some time to guess the composer of that opening motet, beautifully written though it may be. The performance was not auspicious either: a little too delicate in sound, albeit with an unpleasant nasal quality intruding from time to time. The madrigals, however, were much more impressive in performance. A couple of settings by Orazio Vecchi opened, the first the first composition we know of Giovanni Battista Guarini’s ‘Ardo, sì, ma non t’amo’, which, according to Agnew, received no fewer than sixty-two settings. (Presumably then, there will be settings we have lost too.) It benefited from a fuller sound, unsurprisingly more dramatic too, with hints of the street, at times almost spat out, though the tenderness of the penultimate line (‘Perch’ho già sano il core’) was equally striking. ‘Ardi o gela a tua voglia’, also from Vecchi’s 1573 First Book of Madrigals, came in this context as an answer from womankind, excoriation of an unfaithful, merciless girl followed by the same concerning an unfaithful, shameless man. The final cadence was especially well handled, properly climactic.

Three pieces from Monteverdi’s First Book of Canzonette, all for three voices, followed. Perhaps I am reading too much into such an early work (published 1584), but ‘Canzonette d’amore’ already sounded more than a little erotic. ‘Quando sperai’ emerged as a study in male plangency, echoing the sad final stanza:

Così per sé far l’ape ogn’anno crede
Miser ail mele, e mai non lo possiede
Che altri le fura e toglie
Il dolce frutto e le sue care spoglie.

Others will always steal the sweet honey the bee thinks it is making for itself. ‘Raggi dov’è il mio bene’ permitted the women to respond in flighty fashion, though subtly so. If the vocal quality sounded more girlish than womanly, then that may well have been the intention.

Monteverdi’s teacher, Marc’Antonio Ingegneri, was featured with a couple of madrigals from his 1587 Fifth Book, the first another setting of ‘Ardo, sì, ma non t’amo’, both performances clearly relishing the composer’s strikingly beautiful harmonies (perhaps more striking than his word-setting). Two madrigals from Luca Marenzio’s Book Four displayed courtliness (‘A che tormi il ben mio’) and a ‘busy-ness’ that truly seemed to presage Monteverdi (‘Questa ordì il laccio’). Finally in the first half, we had a sneak preview, as it were, of the final three madrigals from Monteverdi’s collection, beginning with his setting of ‘Ardo, sì, ma non t’amo’: animated, undeniably human as well as humanist. The post-Vecchi dramatist was already to the fore in the other two settings, both of Tasso.

Even the opening madrigal of Monteverdi’s First Book, ‘Ch’ami la vita mia nel tuo bel nome’, seemed in itself a touching journey from life to death, the latter of course encompassing a multitude of sins – and pleasures. I was reminded of Raymond Leppard’s wonderful description of Dido and Aeneas as ‘Tristan und Isolde in a pint pot’. This was a smaller receptacle still, yet in its way as exquisite. Monteverdi’s later dramatic madrigals, though on a much larger scale than this, have a great deal more to say than most operas that succeed them. The struggle between love and ‘death’ also featured strongly in madrigals such as ‘A che tormi il ben mio’. ‘Baci soavi e cari’ received a delicate reading, whose clarity was such that one could readily have taken dictation of each line. Phyllis, the bane of madrigal singers and listeners worldwide, put in a couple of appearances, though the Highbury police sirens that followed quickly upon ‘Filli cara ed amata’ suggested she might be a little more interesting than previously suspected. The poignancy of ‘Poiché del mio dolore’ was touching indeed, likewise that of the heart-rending ‘Se nel partir da voi’, whose chromaticism almost tends to the Purcellian. I was also much taken with the freedom with which ‘Questa ordì il laccio’ was despatched. When the final three madrigals came around again, they sounded both familiar and changed. It was a pity that the very last, ‘Arsi ed alsi a mia voglia’ sounded somewhat hectic, impetuous even, almost throwaway. But on the whole, there had been a great deal to enjoy – and to learn. In that context, it is also worth welcoming such an intelligently written, informative booklet note from Andrew Stewart, his words taking in judiciously-selected historical and intellectual context as well as the work of Susan McClary. (One London hall recently hit rock bottom with a programme that said not a single word about the music of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony but nevertheless found the space to thank the Savoy Hotel for Claudio Abbado’s biography, artist representation clearly having moved on from the traditional agency model.)