Beat Furrer, Violetter Schnee, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 10 January 2020

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Silvia – Anna Prohaska

Natascha – Elsa Dreisig

Jan – Gyula Orendt

Peter – Georg Nigl

Jacques – Otto Katzameier

Tanja – Martina Gedeck

Dancers – Uri Burger, Alexander Fend, Gernot Frischling, Annekatrin Kiesel, Victoria McConnell, Filippo Serra

Claus Guth (director)

Étienne Pluss (set designs)

Ursula Kudrna (costumes)

Arian Andiel (video)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Vocalconsort Berlin

Staatskapelle Berlin

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

Silvia (Anna Prohaska), Tanja (Martina Gedeck)

The word Gesamtkunstwerk should probably be retired – especially with respect to Wagner, who, not that one would know from 99%+ of the ‘literature’, barely used it. Or perhaps it should not, so long as we separate it from Wagner and acknowledge a broader context and understanding, both preceding and following the Master of Bayreuth (or, better, the ‘artwork of the future’). For Gesamtkunstwerk retains a certain ‘ideal’ force in many respects, just as do, say, ‘epic’ and ‘postdramatic’ theatre, both of which will generally be understood partly as reactions to it. In 2020, any serious consideration of one, be it theoretical, practical, or both, will almost certainly entail consideration of the others. This evening, the first of two revival performances of Beat Furrer’s 2019 opera, Violetter Schnee, elicited such thoughts of quasi-Adornian Rettung in that I found it difficult as well as undesirable to try to separate Claus Guth’s production from either work or performance. Whether you call that a Gesamtkunstwerk matters little; however, depending on your standpoint, perhaps the idea’s modernist heritage will. At any rate, I shall not attempt to dissect, but rather to give an impression of the whole, illusory or otherwise.

Those of us who spend a good deal of time in museums and art galleries will have been familiar, perhaps too familiar, with the scene of the opening. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Die Jäger im Schnee enjoys – and suffers – a painting’s usual fate, at least when not snowed under by visitors. However, one visitor, Tanja (played in distinctive, declamatory fashion by actress Martina Gedeck), takes more notice, becomes immersed, affording the starting point for something, like snow, difficult and undesirable to pin down: an aesthetic, but perhaps also a dramatic, odyssey. That, at least is how it might seem; or does the world that emerges from the painting, breathtakingly constructed from enlargement and development of its detail by Guth’s team (Étienne Pluss, Ursula Kudrna, Arian Andiel, and Olaf Freese), actually exist first, and give rise to her visit, perhaps to the painting too? Apocalypse deferred or frozen in both soon seems neither to have been deferred nor frozen at all.

Winter snow may be an object of aesthetic contemplation for us: more so than ever in an age of ecological catastrophe in which we rightly fear that soon we may never see it again, or we may see little else. It is too for the cast, led by spellbinding performances from sopranos Anna Prohaska and Elsa Dreisig, pure, seductive, and dangerous as the falling and driven snow. Yet it is also for them the key to catastrophe; any attempt to distinguish seems once again to miss the point. Where some characters, if one may call them that, acknowledge that - Otto Katzameier's Jacques most consistently – others seem, or is that just us as spectators, more partial. A house in which characters are trapped, from which they continually escape to the rooftop to experience the snow that will claim them soon enough, offers form, visual, dramatic, even musical; or so we imagine. At any rate, its confines, like those of the score, those of the stage, those of the opera house, both permit and prevent our eyes and ears zooming in on detail – as in (imaginary outsider?) Tanja’s (imaginary?) gallery. 

Furrer’s word-setting acknowledges and extends partiality and wholeness of experience, yet also calls them into question. Its metrical intricacies do not merely mirror the snow; do they perhaps in some aesthetic, even aestheticising sense, incite or create it? Shifting orchestral timbres, Klangfarbenmelodien for an age in which snow might eventually turn violet, seem at times to form the basis for pitch, rhythm, and other parameters, at other times to carry on regardless: like snow, like humans lost therein. What about the meantime? Those humans might ask each other that, but do they, and what would be the point? Maybe there is no meantime, for the end is soon upon us. Guided by Matthias Pintscher’s typically expert direction of the superlative Staatskapelle Berlin, we know and yet do not know that the magic of a Gesamtkunstwerk, of nature, of art, of aesthetic contemplation, of activism, have passed before us and yet also have not. Sun will come, will vanquish – and it does. Viole(n)t snow and life? Certainly. Why? Who knows and who cares? Frame and stage remain: faithful reflection, artifice, or both? 

Olga Neuwirth: Orlando (world premiere), Vienna State Opera, 8 December 2019

Images: (c) Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

Orlando – Kate Lindsey

Narrator – Anna Clementi

Guardian Angel – Eric Jurenas
Queen, Purity, Friend of Orlando’s Child – Constance Hauman
Modesty – Margaret Plummer
Sasha, Chastity – Agneta Eichenholz
Shelmerdine, Greene – Leigh Melrose
Dryden – Marcus Pelz
Addison – Carlos Osuna
Duke – Wolfgang Bankl
Pope – Christian Miedl
Orlando’s Child – Justin Vivian Bond
Putto – Emil Lang
Doctor 1 – Wolfram Igor Derntl
Doctor 2 – Hans Peter Kammerer
Doctor 3 – Ayk Martirossian
Orlando’s Girlfriend, Lead Singer – Katie La Folle
Lead Singer – Ewelina Jurga
Two Actresses – Selina Ströberle, Antoannetta Kostadinova
Tutor – Andreas Patton
Russian Sailor – Felix Erdmann
Boat’s Captain – Michael Stark
Children’s Father – Tvrtko Štajcer
Officiant – Massimo Rizzo
Fiancée – Katharina Billerhart
Servant – Florian Glatt
Cameraman – Robert Angst

Polly Graham (director)

Will Duke (video)
Roy Spahn (set designs)
COMME des GARÇONS (costumes, masks)
Julien D’Ys (hair creation)
Stephen Jones (masks)
Ulrich Schneider (lighting)
Markus Noisternig, Gilbert Nouno, Clément Cornuau, Olga Neuwirth (live electronics and sound design)
Julien Aléonard (sound direction)
Jenny Ogilvie (movement)
Helga Utz (dramaturgy)

Vienna State Opera Choral Academy

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus directors: Thomas Lang, Stefano Ragusini, Svetolomar Zlatkov)

Band (Lucas Niggli (percussion), Stephan Börst (bass guitar), Edmund Köhldorfer (electric guitar), Annemarie Herfurth (synthesister), Martina Stückler (alto saxophone))

Stage Orchestra and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

The first ever opera composed by a woman to appear on the main stage of the Vienna State Opera, let alone the first such to be commissioned and premiered by that house, not only did Olga Neuwirth Orlando defy expectations; not only, indeed, was it dramatically concerned with defiance of expectations; it accomplished those tasks and/or performed those roles with gestures of defiance such as that house had never previously seen. It was concerned with writing, yet also with performance; with sex, yet also with gender; with Vienna, yet also with the wider world; with art, yet also with violence. This was an historic evening that was also concerned with history—and with its uncomfortable bedfellows, present and future.

Based on Virginia Woolf’s novel, yet, as is common with Neuwirth’s work, drawing upon and quoting a number of other related sources—some quotations came from Sally Potter’s film—score, Polly Graham’s staging, and libretto, written collaboratively by Catherine Filloux and Neuwirth, take us from the Elizabethan era to the present, dangling an uncertain future before us. Orlando, the boy who time travels and reawakens as woman sees his/her story taken further than Woolf’s 1928, through spin of a filmic top and absorbing musical transition, right up until now, yet also peers into the future through her non-binary child, played here by performer Mx Justin Vivian Bond, whose non-operatic voice is doubtless more startling to many in a theatre such as this than are ideas of gender fluidity. Or rather, the latter should come as little challenge whatsoever to an artform and audience accustomed to a Nerone, a Cherubino, or an Octavian, yet sadly may still do so for some in this particular context. Perhaps, be it consciously or unconsciously, because this is not an opera written by men; because, like Neuwirth’s widely misunderstood American Lulu, it is an opera that purposely seeks to avert, even to neuter, the male gaze. How dare she/they? That the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, a renowned interpreter of all three of those roles, should feature here at the centre of the opera and do so with such excellence, should and, certainly in my case, did give pause for thought.

Hand on heart, in the house, I was neither so intrigued or convinced by libretto and Polly Graham’s often surprisingly conventional staging as I was by score and most performances. That said, I have since found myself considering their collaborative interaction more than I should have suspected. There is probably a lesson in that too: certainly collaboration and respect of difference lay, unsurprisingly yet with undoubted moral force, in occasion and opera alike. The scenes looking to the future, for all their polemical intent, seemed to me dramatically to descend into little more than a litany of demands to build a better world; I was going to say no one could reasonably object to them, but many objections—not least the hostility experienced from sections of the audience—are far from reasonable. Aesthetic judgement would probably have recommended a cut of half an hour: perhaps even more, with greater time being afforded earlier scenes that seem somewhat rushed through. That was not necessarily, however, the sole form of judgement to be exercised here. Perhaps this audience did need to see and hear Orlando with her girlfriend, to hear her child sing freely, to be reminded of the threat Trump-and-Johnson fascism poses us all, and so forth. Olga Neuwirth is not Richard Strauss. This was not really an occasion for l’art pour l’art. Mr Greene’s refusal to publish Orlando’s work and his anger when she dared question his critical judgement spoke of and to many: not so much when the mask dropped as when it was donned in all its horror.

I set to thinking about how Neuwirth’s work fitted—and did not fit—into received canons of modernist politically committed work. (How could I not, such having been a particular research—and life—concern of my own?) Not entirely coincidentally, Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono came to mind. Electronic manipulation of voices, here clearly a telling comment on and dramatisation of other possibilities and hopes for transition, formed part of a greater determination to offer as large a vocal range as possible, whilst rightly affording particular attention to the female voice in its various guises. As Matthias Pintscher pointed out in a programme interview, not only did Neuwirth specify that Orlando should be sung by a mezzo, but ‘exactly what kind of mezzo-soprano she has in mind. And always the spectrum: the three ladies Purity, Chastity, Modesty, or the three doctors or the poets, and especially in the choruses: a children’s choir, and the division in the voices.’ That went for vibrato, or not, and all manner of degrees in between. Interest in incorporation of music from far beyond the Classical canon, whilst subjecting it to procedures and development we may still reasonably consider modernist is a political as well as an aesthetic statement. The desire to give voice to those without a voice is common, of course, to both Henze and Nono, yet not necessarily in this way. It is difficult to imagine either incorporating pop music in this way, though Henze arguably came a little closer in a work such as Natascha Ungeheuer—or perhaps better, in his idea of a work that in many ways turned out rather differently: ‘the finished product,’ as he put it, ‘was to have a touch of arte povera.’

Quotation, allusion, reference: these are rife, incorporated into Orlando’s development as a writer, again more successfully in the score than elsewhere. The play between expectation, between what was new and what one ‘knew’, between those and what one may have been artistically convinced one knew was part and parcel not only of the opera’s aesthetic worth, but surely also of its political message. Tudor church music, Purcell’s Sound the Trumpet (to different yet related words, and sung by a different vocal type), a wonderful recording of Arnold Rosé and his daughter playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto (names of Holocaust victims projected), chordal progressions from Wozzeck (I think…), square manipulations of material from The Rite of Spring: they formed the drama but also led one to think what is ‘quotation’ and how does it differ from ‘allusion’ and ‘reference’? Traditionally, pitch has proved paramount. Should it be now, in a different age, with different music, different requirements, different forms of transition? Again and again, one’s ears come back to the interludes, to possibilities for change, for transformation—and to their achievement. There is messiness, often deliberately so. That was surely part of the point, just as it can be with Henze and indeed with much art, musical and non-musical. Neuwirth’s recent film score for Die Stadt ohne Juden could not help but hang in the air, not least since the strong presence of film sometimes afforded a narrative, yet aesthetically destabilising, sense of film to proceedings.

I could continue saying what the opera is not. It is certainly not primarily concerned with character, as conventionally dramatically understood. Neither is Fidelio, for that matter, still less Al gran sole carico d’amore—or any Nono opera, for that matter. There is often something to be said for a via negativa, perhaps: ask Aquinas, or the Schoenberg of Moses und Aron, with its ‘unrepresentable [etc.] God’. Again, though, I am not sure that that is the point here. Comparison with Al gran sole, an opera concerned with women’s revolutionary experience, written by a composer of undoubted importance to Neuwirth, may well illuminate. Yet it still presents a male composer as model. Many, most, even all of us can only avoid that path fitfully for the moment. Awareness may take us a little further along a path less trodden; or, to quote the thirteenth-century inscription that once so inspired Nono, ‘Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar,’ (‘Travellers, there are no paths, only travelling itself’). Easy, doubtless, to say, with privilege, yet nevertheless often helpful to bear in mind.

That certain threatened, entitled, privileged elements in the audience took it upon themselves loudly, violently, fascistically to boo the composer—not, be it noted, anyone else from a participant list of Meyerbeerian proportions—doubtless contributed to the first-night ‘drama’ in the demotic sense. Yet it was difficult to resist—and why would one resist?—asking why they had done so. Presumably those old, white, cisgender, heterosexual men had known that they were not in for an Against Modern Opera Productions evening of Donizetti and Zeffirelli. They had attended, it would seem, in order to boo, in order to attack—a woman and others in roles these self-appointed protectors considered not to be fit for them. We knew on whose side they would have stood—on whose side they still stood—when it came to accusations of ‘degenerate’ (entartet) art. That Neuwirth, longstanding collaborator with that most heroic of Nestbeschmutzerinnen, Elfried Jelinek, once again refused to be oppressed by the hegemonic either/or, to be ‘yodelled out of existence’ as she put it in a celebrated 2000 intervention against Austria’s far-Right FPÖ, that she and others fought back, was the crucial thing here to those angered by the slightest disruption to their unmerited, alleged authority.

What better way to oppose stark primary colours of exclusivity than through music, that most ambiguous of media? Those who would ‘defend’ it—against what and on whose authority?—proved, as ever, to be those most violent in their defamation of it. ‘I will continue,’ in Orlando’s final words, ‘because: “Nobody has the right to obey!” My hopes are fading, but my rage remains. –’ Yes, but… Just as in Così fan tutte or Capriccio, Götterdämmerung or, yes, American Lulu, music, still more than language, provides the ‘buts’. For that, however, one must listen, and to listen through the struggle to appreciate that there is no more one way to listen than there is to write or to perform. If that is not ultimately a political message, I am not sure what is. ‘Nobody has the right to obey!’

Pahud/ORF SO/Brönnimann - Boulez, Ibert, Pintscher, and Debussy, 1 June 2017

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus

Boulez – Figures-Doubles-Prismes

Boulez – Mémoriale (… explosante-fixe … Originel)

Ibert – Flute Concerto

Pintscher – Osiris

Debussy – La Mer

Emmanuel Pahud (flute)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Baldur Brönnimann (conductor)

My present visit to Vienna helpfully – and quite unwittingly, at least at the version of initial planning – takes in the second half, roughly speaking, of the 38^th International Musical Festival of the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft. A good number of the concerts I shall review here will be part of that festival; and a good number of those will feature music by one of the Konzerthaus’s Honorary Members, the late Pierre Boulez. This concert from Emmanuel Pahud, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Baldur Brönnimann most certainly did, although I was not entirely convinced that the Boulez pieces themselves were the performative highlights. Not, I hasten to add, that they were not good performances. Perhaps that is actually in itself, ironically, an encouraging sign, for the incorporation of Boulez’s music into the core repertoire now seems unstoppable. We hear these works much more often, nowadays; many more musicians perform them; we grow used to finer discrimination between performances, just as we are used to exercising when it comes to Beethoven or Brahms.

At any rate, I do not wish to exaggerate. The opening éclat of Figures-Doubles-Prismes made its proper impression, as did the following orchestral music, de profundis, and the exquisite tapestry of delights that followed that – all in less than a minute. There was a keen sense of non-linear, or not-only-linear, time, of expansion, although I wondered whether there might have been a little more of the latter. (Perhaps it was the acoustic.) A good few seeds of the much later world of the orchestral Notations seemed to be sown here, in a way I do not recall having noticed before, likewise the proliferating tendencies of the later music. Messiaen also seemed to hover in the background, even in the foreground occasionally, as if we were hearing secularised birdsong. The slightly, but only slightly, earthbound impression persisted into Mémoriale, Pahud and the small ensemble offering admirable clarity as figures bounced from soloist to others, almost as if they were a shadow, not quite taking on a life of its own, but nevertheless possessed of autonomy. Pahud’s flute playing was so admirably clear that one might have taken dictation. Both Boulez pieces, bizarrely, were met with outraged booing and shouted obscenities from one member of the audience. Quite what he had been expecting, I have no idea; the woman with him looked mortified, still more so when the rest of the audience turned and laughed at him. Pahud’s gentle mocking when the man simply would not shut up was just the thing: he cupped his ear as if to say ‘I’m sorry; I can’t hear you.’   

It was noteworthy that our fascistic friend did not react similarly to the Ibert Flute Concerto which, somewhat oddly, followed. I should never dream of booing any performance and look very dimly on those who do, but for me, at least, the excellence of the performances notwithstanding, it was a bit of a trial, a slight piece of note-spinning that overstayed its welcome. There was no gainsaying Pahud’s virtuosity, nor indeed that of the rest of the orchestra, the leader included (her slow movement solos ravishingly played). Pahud’s range of articulation and dynamic range proved equally impressive, and he came as close to winning me over to this music as I imagine anyone could. Oh well, no one responds equally well to everything.

Matthias Pintscher’s Osiris, on the other hand, proved something of a revelation. It was premiered by Boulez in Chicago in 2008, but the kinship seemed to run deeper than that: kinship, I stress, certainly no mere imitation. Fantastical arabesques – again, truly exquisite high string writing – seemed to come into contact with, be changed by, and in turn transform, a more Germanic post-expressionist sound world: not so overt as, say, in Wolfgang Rihm or Jörg Widmann, perhaps all the more intriguing for its relative distance and its mediation of competing tendencies. It sounded, with the strong narrative pull of the work, as if this were a somewhat unexpected (that is, to say, not merely neo-Romantic) rapprochement with the tone poem. A Schoenbergian wind, as if from planet Gurrelieder, blew through the score at one point, the message seemingly more metaphysical than material. A trumpet solo, wonderfully played, sang and dazzled as if it represented a ‘character’; perhaps it did. Splendidly stereophonic tuned percussion playing inevitably recalled Boulez. This, I am sure, is music that needs rehearing; I look forward to doing so.

Finally, with La Mer, we heard an undisputed repertoire classic, one not only strongly associated with Boulez, but one performed at the 1958 premiere of Doubles, as it then was. I found Brönnimann’s reading, and the ORF SO’s performance thereof, utterly compelling: fresh, neither hidebound to tradition nor novel for the sake of it. ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ veritably teemed with life – and, like the sea, the more so the more carefully one looked (or listened). A strong sense of quasi-symphonic line prepared us well for the great climax of midday. The fantastical scherzo of ‘Jeux de vagues’ offered obvious connections with Boulez’s own music, yet spoke very much for itself too. Phrases were finely turned, yet never narcissistically so. It was impossible to ignore, though – and why would one try? – the seductive colours from the strings; silver, gold, all manner of shades in between and beyond. Now, in a reversal of the stakes in Mémoriale, it was wind that offered the shadow; until, of course, Debussy turned the tables time and time again so as to make a nonsense of such pedantry. There was, quite rightly, much that remained ineffable, not to be grasped. The wind that blew in ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’ was a stormy one. Balances again shifted before our ears; so much comes to us from Debussy, as Boulez would have been the first to admit. Wagner, too, seemed to hover behind the score – as indeed, with the exception of the Ibert, he had all evening. But he hovered, flickered; all remained fruitfully uncertain, even the final climax. Boulez would surely have nodded in agreement.

For György Kurtág's 90th Birthday: Petite musique solennelle en hommage à Pierre Boulez 90

Premiered last year at Lucerne, this short piece, as stark, as clear, as concise, as monumental, as anything I know from its composer was intended, as its title makes clear, as a homage to the composer whose death remains and will remain the greatest of our musical losses in 2016. Webern stands, if anything, more closely and yet also more ambiguously behind the honour than the honoured. The post-war generation's work is far from done.

Salzburg Festival (8): EIC/Pintscher - Boulez, Répons, 15 August 2015

Lehrbauhof

Répons (two performances)

Soloists:

Hidéki Nagano (piano)

Sébastien Vichard (piano)

Frédérique Cambreling (harp)

Luigi Gaggero (cimbalom)

Samuel Favre (vibraphone)

Gilles Durot (xylophone)

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Andrew Gerzso/Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM electronic realisation)

Matthias Pintscher (conductor) 

And so, the climax of my 2015 visit to Salzburg: my first ever hearing in the flesh of Répons. Sadly, I shall almost certainly never hear it conducted by the composer, save for on his Deutsche Grammophon recording (invaluable, but no replacement for the real thing). However, the superlative Ensemble Intercontemporain did Boulez as proud under Matthias Pintscher as I am sure they would have done the composer himself. To hear a work ‘live’ is always a different matter from hearing a recording, but a work in which spatial considerations are so crucial can only truly be heard like this. At any rate, the Salzburg Festival’s performances, in the Lehrbauhof, will surely be something I shall remember for the rest of my life. Every single performer struck me as contributing something nearly super-human. If I single none of them out, it is because my experience was such that it would be unfair to do so, not because they do not all deserve to be named.

As has often been the case, the work was performed twice. Each ticket had two different placements, enabling one to hear the work – and for once, this is no cliché – anew. Seated behind the orchestra (in section ‘D’) for the first half, I not only found the Introduction considerably sharper, also more ‘orchestral’ in the second half (section ‘A’), something which, I admit, might also have been simply a matter of a second hearing. As the work progressed, lines, sonorities, combinations emerged such as I truly do not think it would have been possible for me to have heard earlier. What also struck me forcefully was not only the – obvious, yet still interesting – thematic kinship with Dérive 2, of which I had had my ‘breakthrough’ hearing from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and DanielBarenboim earlier in the week. The difference in compositional method and the multiplicity of possibilities, some realised, many more yet to be realised, were no matter of theoretical reflection, not that there is any reason to slight such activity; the seemingly endless possibilities inherent and immanent in the material lived, struggled, sometimes even won out in my ears and in my imagination. Or so I flattered myself – but I do not think that was mere idle self-flattery, for such was genuinely my experience as this rich aural tapestry was spun. (Mention of tapestry has me recall a fleeting thought that Boulez’s late enthusiasm for Szymanowski – he knew some before, I know, but did little about it – may have been ignited here. Fanciful, doubtless, but why not spin a few more connections?)

Drama, just as in, say, an excellent performance of Structures 2, was everywhere: almost as if it could be instantiated in several dimensions at once. (I realise I am speaking nonsense, at least according to one understanding, but nonsense sometimes has its uses.) The truth of Boulez’s claim that his later work would have been inconceivable without his conducting of Wagner and Mahler was triumphantly vindicated; this work-in-progress – we sometimes forget that she score as it stands gives the date, tantalisingly as ‘1981/…’ – is as much a successor to Wagnerian music dramas as Mahler’s symphonies are, albeit forcing open a material tendency to open-endedness that Wagner and Mahler are so adamant to close. On this occasion, Répons seemed emphatically to open a new chapter in the composer’s œuvre. Long accused – unfairly and uncomprehendingly – by those jealous of his extraordinary talent of having taken refuge in his conducting activities, the composer and his IRCAM collaborators, who should always be honoured in any discussion of this work, reimagines not only the relationship between instruments and electronics, but also, in dramatic instrumental form, the time-honoured liturgical responsorial relationship between precentor and choir. Hence the title. Here, lighting – a literally ‘electrical’ response, as it were, to the end of the quasi-expository Introduction, and the entrance of the soloists and electronics – played a structural-dramatic role, just as if we had an intelligent stage director or liturgist on hand.

One example of maintenance of coherence between instrumental and electronic worlds, to which Andrew Gerzso draws attention in his booklet note for the CD release, is that of the soloists’ arpeggiated chords. As the soloists take their turns, so are the chords in turn transformed by electronics, ‘in such a way that the arpeggiated chords are themselves arpeggiated. The overall result of the soloists and the transformed sounds together is that of an arpeggio of an arpeggio of an arpeggio.’ Moreover, the pitches of the successive arpeggiated chords themselves are all ultimately derived from a seven-note vibraphone chord, through familiar operations such as transposition and combination, each instrument taking from another and yet remaining in touch with the first. Oppositions multiply and, in a sense, attract. Meter returns, joining and indeed transforming his earlier works’ opposition between ‘smooth’ (chaotic and irregular) and ‘striated’ (regular, repeated notes) time; so does ‘symmetrical’ harmony. Ornamentation and proliferation – the [Paul] SACHER hexachord ever in the background, not necessarily to be heard – abound.

I quote myself (from the English-language programme note I wrote for this performance) in the preceding paragraph, not because I have run out of things to say. (Honestly!) I do so, because reading those words, that is, almost uncannily, precisely what I heard, albeit within a ‘live’, dramatic, experiential framework, which made the work sound both known and unknown. In the words of Hans Sachs, hero of a work Boulez long wished to conduct and yet which, alas, he never did, ‘Es klang so alt und war doch so neu!’ One will never quite hear the same work twice, of course, in any situation, but the open-endedness of something which yet emphatically remains a ‘musical work’ intensifies the exhilaration and the poignancy of the moment.

   

EIC/Pintscher - Debussy, Boulez, Robin, and Pintscher, 28 April 2015

Barbican Hall

Debussy – Syrinx

Boulez – Mémoriale (… explosante-fixe … Originel)
Yann Robin – Asymétriades
Matthias Pintscher – Choc (Monumento IV)
Boulez – sur Incises
Boulez – Anthèmes 1 and 2

Sophie Cherrier (flute)

Nicolas Crosse (double bass)

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Arshia Cont and Franck Rossi (IRCAM electronics)

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

The Barbican’s Boulez celebrations have not been accorded so high a profile as those in many other European cities. (Click here for a sad report on the dire situation across the Atlantic. The New York Philharmonic, of all orchestras, appears to be ignoring its erstwhile Music Director completely.) Still, each has been welcome, this third, concluding instalment included.

No composer, even Webern, stands closer to Boulez than Debussy. His Syrinx seems to hover presciently over a good few of Boulez’s pieces, his early Sonatine included – and also Mémoriale, which would follow. Sophie Cherrier was the excellent flautist for both pieces. She offered what sounded, lapsing into ‘national’ cliché, a ‘French sound, pure and clear, unencumbered with excessive vibrato. Debussy’s brief solo work thus seemed both to hark back to Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and forward to Mémoriale, which emerged almost as a continuation. In this context, the Ensemble Intercontemporain sounded initially rather as a refraction of the solo part, the ensemble itself emerging into its own identity. Matthias Pintscher ensured a performance that was eminently precise, that precision, like Boulez’s own, never an end in itself, but as a tool of musical expression. This was an exquisite fantasy, of somewhat different, perhaps less sweet, flavour than that offered recently by Karl-Heinz Schütz, the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, but no less welcome. One of the pleasures of such a year – and let us hope that it does not remain a single year – has been to hear different interpretative approaches to Boulez’s music.

 

Yann Robin’s 2014 Asymétriades followed, Nicolas Crosse the double bass soloists. It was the first time I had heard any of Robin’s music; I hope it will not be the last. Although it is easier to point to contrasts with Boulez’s music, one thing that struck me was how the ensemble sound emerged from the double bass, just as I had heard it do from the flute in Mémoriale. Helmut Lachenmann’s example offered another mental comparison: not that this sounded ‘like’ Lachenmann’s music, but almost as if it presented itself very much ‘after’ the German composer’s deconstruction and reconstruction of instrumental performance. The sounds we heard, doubtless unorthodox to conservative ears, owed much to what some still call ‘extended techniques’, but they registered with such confidence as to render such a term, or indeed such a thought, quite anachronistic. That said, I was astonished to hear some of the sounds I heard coming from the ensemble I saw; I often could not say, on a first hearing, what came from where. If such be a secret of orchestration, then it seemed to have been fully mastered. Asymétriades was as visceral as Mémoriale sounded æthereal; it seemed very much an urban landscape and drama, although it should certainly not be reduced to such terms. Varèse, nevertheless, sprang to mind – albeit with very new means. Fast, frenetic, and not without fun, the work’s asymmetries thrilled and confounded. Insofar as I could tell, the performances were superb, not least that of the astoundingly brilliant Crosse. The EIC is as fortunate to have him as it is to have Cherrier.

Pintscher followed that piece with his own 1996 Choc (Monumento IV). Again, there was great contrast to be heard; whilst not without its structurally defining eruptions, nor indeed the éclat common to Robin and, definitively, to Boulez, this was sonically much more of a tapestry, perhaps somewhat in Boulez’s line. However, the sense of, as Pintscher has put it, ‘camouflaging sounds’ was again a thread in common with the preceding work, at least. It is, he was quoted in the programme as having said, ‘part of my compositional thinking, so that one can never exactly be sure who is playing or whether the sound is coming from.’ It needs, of course, an ensemble of the excellence of that founded by Boulez to accomplish that, just as it does in the alchemy of Richard Strauss; that it received here, in a splendidly incisive performance.

… which brings us to sur Incises. The expansion inherent – and discovered – in so much of Boulez’s material is emphatically a conceptual foundation of the work here, as much visually in the layout for three pianos, three percussionists, and three harps, as in this most beguiling dramatic tapestry. Sounding almost decadently Romantic, the performance never lost its sure structural foundation; it scintillated in the best – and proper – sense. The composer’s sheer delight in the sound of three pianos registered, as if one were hearing a multi-dimensional instrument, and performance – which indeed is part of the point. What one might call Boulez’s toccata tendency engaged with symmetries that were not fearful but apparently fearless: testament to performance as well as to work.

As a welcome post-concert treat, those of us who wished were invited to a performance of Anthèmes 1 and Anthèmes 2 by Michael Barenboim, the latter with IRCAM electronics. I have written recently about a Barenboim performance of Anthèmes 2; this was perhaps still more confident, and certainly had one listening with new ears in new context. It was fascinating to hear the earlier ‘version’, if one may it that, and I think in context one may, and to reflect on the expansion – not unlike that of Incises into sur Incises – of a solo work that inevitably has one think of Bach as surely as Mémoriale does of Syrinx. That, and Barenboim’s excellent performance, certainly heightened structural awareness, whilst the sonic tapestry seemed almost, doubtless misleadingly, to take care of itself. Such, after all, is part of the business of performance; once again, art concealed art and yet never forgot its performative nature, just as Boulez had intended when emphatically returning to electronic music in Répons. More on that, later in the year, from Salzburg…

Salzburg Festival (7) – Scharoun Ensemble/Pintscher: ‘Beyond Recall: Kunstprojekt Salzburg’, 24 August 2013

 Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Vykintas Baltakas – Eselbrücke

Mark Andre – E2
Dai Fujikura – silence seeking solace
Jay Schwartz – M
Olga Neuwirth – Piazza dei numeri
Bruno Mantovani – Spirit of Alberti
Matthias Pintscher – Beyond (A System of Passing)
Nina Šenk – In the Absence
Michael Jarrell – Adtende, ubi albescit veritas
Johannes Maria Staud – Caldera (for Tony Cragg): Szene im antilopischen Stil
David Fulmer – Faces of Awilda
Vito Žuraj – Insideout

Mojca Erdmann (soprano)

Dietrich Henschel (baritone)

Scharoun Ensemble and other members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

Anthony Cragg: Caldera

 

It seemed such a splendid idea: twelve new commissions, all to receive their first performances, each inspired by a different new(-ish) piece of public art in the city of Salzburg, especially since the quality of the latter works is far higher than what we must often endure in the United Kingdom. One expects something of a mixed bag in such situations, and that was certainly the case here; however, even had that not been the case, there was, at least for me, a distinct, indeed insuperable, problem with respect to the presentation. I like to think of myself as capable of enduring the odd musical marathon; as a Wagner scholar, my stamina has perhaps become greater than that of those whose musical experiences focus entirely upon the traditional concert. Moreover, I am very much in favour of experiments with concert form and length, though not necessarily just for the sake of it. Here, however, I simply found the experience too much. A concert of new works, not all of which are likely to become acclaimed as masterpieces, lasting from 7 p.m. until almost 11 p.m., with but one short interval, really did not show off any of the works to good advantage, a difficulty exacerbated by blinding lighting from the stage. (There was more than one instance I spied of a player wincing.) Half-way, or perhaps not even that, through the first half – actually comprised of seven pieces – I struggled to regain the will to live, and cannot imagine that I was entirely alone in that respect.

 

For that reason, I do not intend to go into any great detail concerning the pieces performed; I do not feel in a position to do so, and should rather say little or nothing than be unfairly damning. The first four pieces I could readily have done without. Vykintas Baltakas’s Eselbrücke is inspired by Brigitte Kowanz’s Beyond Recall, a commemoration of the prisoners of war who built Salzburg’s Staatsbrücke between 1941 and 1945. Eselbrücke was brighter than one might have expected, but that was partly the point, I think; however, its post-Stravinskian fanfare quality – presumably intended to portray the hustle and bustle of the modern city, motion without progress? – outstayed its welcome somewhat. Mark Andre’s E2, for double bass and cello, was merely dull: grey and well-nigh interminable. Mojca Erdmann made the first of a number of scintillating appearances in Dai Fujikura’s silence seeking solace, joining a string quartet in a piece that was pretty enough, but which did not evade suspicions of note-spinning. In a way, it was a relief to hear the pop-like repetitions of Mozart phrases in Jay Schwartz’s M, but, despite Dietrich Henschel’s committed performance – he generally seems in his element in new music – it was difficult to think that such post-minimalism (?) amounted to much more than shop-soiled rhythms and silly noises.

 

The other pieces in the first half seemed more substantial, though fatigue did not help their reception. Olga Neuwirth offered a typically finely-wrought ensemble piece (with high soprano, Erdmann), Piazza dei numeri, responding to Mario Merz’s Ziffern im Wald. Despite Neuwirth’s concern that she risked becoming obsessed with numbers – are not most composers, in one way or another? – she bases her score on Fibonacci rows from Merz’s igloo, formed of stainless steel struts, their neon-lit numbers most readily visible in the Mönchsberg evening. (The programme booklet for the concert is invaluable in its provision of such information.) As we heard numbers sung from the igloo, there was a definite sense that music and the image projected on a screen behind the stage – such was the case for all performances – now properly interacted, perhaps even merged. Bruno Mantovani’s Spirit of Alberti played with the Mozartian Alberti bass to iridescent ensemble effect. Matthias Pintscher’s Beyond (A System of Passing) for solo flute benefited enormously from the virtuosity and musicianship of Emmanel Pahud, but it was clearly a major addition to the solo flute repertoire in any case. Reacting to Anselm Kiefer’s Salzburg installation, A.E.I.O.U., the piece, in Pintscher’s own words, ‘enforces a quite different sound [from his preceding work, the orchestral Chute d’étoiles], one of great lightness. It is far more about air, paths, and perspectives – which are also a major topic in Kiefer’s work.’ Paths opened up and closed, likewise the perspectives of which Pintscher spoke; one could well imagine oneself engaging in a Salzburg miniature version (or vision) of Strauss’s Alpine journey.

 

The second half was more consistent in quality, though a certain sameness announced itself in hearing work after work for similar ensemble, even given the variables of vocal contribution. David Fulmer’s Faces of Alwida, the penultimate work to be performed, seemed at first to offer something quite different, and in a sense it did. However, its more ‘Eastern’ soundworld – the usual percussion suspects in particular – soon palled in a piece that sounded stretched to four or five times its optimum length. Nina Šenk and Vito Žuraj proved attentive vocal composers, the former’s In the Absence playful yet touching in its soprano setting of words by Graz artist, Erwin Wurm: ‘bi di bi di bi di bi di/bi di bi di ja zum bi dig e winn.’ Žuraj’s  Insideout was the only piece in which Erdmann and Henschel both participated, its struggle between the sexes evocative of the world of music-theatre. Michael Jarrell and Johannes Maria Staud both justified the regard in which they are held. The former’s Adtende, ubi albescit veritas is inspired by Christian Boltanski’s ghostly sculpture in the crypt of Salzburg Cathedral, death and hope confronting each other in a vocal work (Henschel again) whose piano-led ensemble seemed both to mirror and contest Alfred Hofmann’s translation from Augustine. Staud’s piece for soprano, clarinet, and prepared piano offered more than mere contrast. Taking its leave from perspectives thrown up by Tony Cragg’s Caldera, which stands in Makartplatz – not, ‘Markartplatz’, as the programme had it, both in German and in English –  Staud’s correspondences between soprano and clarinet, at times almost as one, seem heightened by the piano and ‘active page-turner’, whose lines, in the composer’s words, give ‘depth – a three-dimensionality – to what happens,’ and permit ‘a magma-like proliferation’. I wished that I could hear it by the sculpture itself, on another occasion.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (4): Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Harding - Pintscher, Mozart, and Boulez

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum, Salzburg

Matthias Pintscher – Transir: concerto for flute and chamber orchestra
Mozart – Lucio Silla, KV 135: ‘Il tenero momento’ and ‘Pupile amate’
Mozart – La clemenza di Tito, KV 621: ‘Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio’
Boulez – Mémoriale (...explosante-fixe... Originel), for flute and eight instruments
Mozart – Symphony no.41 in C major, KV 551, ‘Jupiter’

Magali Mosnier (flute)
Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Harding (conductor)

This final concert of the Salzburg Mozartwoche was clearly intended as a summation of some of the festival’s principal themes, including as it did three of the four featured composers; only Haydn was missing. Matthias Pintscher showed in Transir, his concerto for flute and chamber orchestra from 2005-6, what a resourceful, intriguing, and successful composer he is. Inspired by the idea that the flute in one form or another is one of the most ancient of all musical instruments and by its close relationship to and extension of human breath itself, Pintscher has written that he wished to explore the ‘particular aura’ of the flute as an instrument. This comes across in the work, as do the prehistoric antecedents. Before the soloist even enters, we hear noises from the orchestra that one might characterise as almost flute-like, or perhaps as straining towards the flute-like. Then we hear the flute work towards – and sometimes veering beyond? – a conventional tone, through Berio-like extended techniques, evoking the mists of time and yet remaining very much of our own. Violent, exotic sounds emanate from the orchestra, riotous sections recalling to me Boulez’s ongoing Notations. It is as if we are hearing a dialogue between soloist and orchestra that in some sense represents the creation of music itself. ‘Liminal’ is a word sorely over-used but it seems apt here. Moreover, Pintscher utilises all sections of his chamber orchestra to marvellous effect. The young players of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra clearly relished this opportunity and impressed, as did Daniel Harding, with rhythmical exactitude. There is a great sense of drama: incipient, immanent, and imminent, and the ending leaves us in response. What next? The young French flautist, Magali Mosnier was in her element throughout, displaying an astonishing technique fully worthy of a piece premiered by Emmanuel Pahud.

So did she also in Boulez’s Mémoriale, which I had been fortunate enough to hear in a Proms performance last summer from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Twice within a matter of months: I may be deluding myself but I do sense a broader popular response recently to Boulez’s music. Once again, the composer was in the audience to receive applause, although he seemed only just to have arrived, still wearing a scarf and overcoat. Febrile, almost glassy strings at the opening hinted at the work’s electronic origins. Mosnier’s trills were extremely beautiful – and very modern-‘flute-like’. It was as if Pintscher had prepared the way for an almost classical statement of the instrument’s charms and capabilities.

In between the Pintscher and Boulez works, we heard three Mozart arias from Susan Graham. The first two came from the early, yet in many ways astonishing, opera seria, Lucio Silla. From the opening of her first recitative, ‘Dunque sperar poss’io di pascer gl’occhi miei,’ Graham displayed fine diction, musicality, and dramatic flair. I was less enamoured with the vibrato-less string accompaniment. Thankfully, vibrato was permitted in the aria itself, ‘Il tenero momento’. I cannot deny that I should have preferred more, but at least we were not subjected to hair-shirt sonorities. Graham’s coloratura was dazzling, not least in its clarity, whilst the woodwind chuckled away delectably. And the heroic nature of Graham’s mezzo proved a fine substitute for the castrato voice. I was impressed by the way that Harding treated this as grown-up music, helping it sound as close to Gluck and yet as distinctly Mozartian as it truly is. ‘Pupille amate’ provided contrast, presenting Mozart in seductive triple-time mode. He can certainly move the listener, even at this stage in his career. Hushed tone was employed here – unlike the previous night’s G minor symphony – for expressive rather than narcissistic purposes. Sesto’s aria, with its celebrated clarinet obbligato, received at least as fine a reading. This may have been Mozart closer to Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s example than I prefer, but it was coherently so. Harding’s projection of the orchestral part was virile rather than merely vexed (Rattle). Moreover, the tempi seemed just right – and dramatically flexible. Graham likewise presented no contradiction between the musical line and dramatic projection. Such was the vividness of her portrayal that one would have had a very good idea what the words meant, even if one lacked acquaintance either with the Italian language or with La clemenza di Tito. This was exemplary Mozart singing.

The final work in the concert and the final work of the festival was, appropriately enough, Mozart’s last symphony, the Jupiter. Whatever reservations I might voice, this was on the whole a performance I enjoyed greatly, and certainly a performance that far outshone the aforementioned Rattle fortieth. Despite a slightly smaller orchestra (nine first violins to the VPO’s ten), there was often a much fuller sound. This was doubtless partly a result of the smaller hall – why do many conductors fail to recognise that a larger hall requires a larger orchestra? – but also of Harding’s more direct, vigorous style. There was nothing ascetic, let alone condescending, to this. One was keenly aware of trumpets and drums: a hallmark of Mozart in his rejoicing mode of C major. Whilst vibrato was occasionally somewhat on the low side, it was thoughtfully varied rather than dogmatically eliminated. Sometimes, the MCO strings sounded delightfully sweet. Moreover, there was a wonderful, almost Abbado-like sense of the players listening and responding to each other, although Harding projected a more dominant personality than his mentor has often been wont to do.

The structure of the first movement was admirably clear and there was a true sense of return for the recapitulation. I was not sure about the occasional rhetorical pauses Harding imposed. In fact, I was sure: they were disruptive. Otherwise, there was a good sense of line, at least with respect to musical paragraphs, and phrasing was consistently stylish. There were a few imperfections of ensemble from the second movement’s muted violins, but the haunting veiled quality achieved made that a price worth paying. This Andante cantabile was not slow but nor was it rushed; rather it flowed. Magical woodwind solos were a particular highlight. If on occasion, some of the music was a little too moulded, that was as nothing when compared to Rattle’s exaggerations. Harding’s minuet was boisterous rather than stately; it was rather fun, but is that what it should be? Its chromatic harmonies were nicely handled though. The trio was similar, though the minor-key episode exuded an apposite vehemence. However, I did not care at all for the pause imposed prior to the return of the minuet; the music was simply left hanging. Normally, I should not have cared for the second-time observation of repeats; Mozart’s music, however, is so rich, that I was quite happy to hear it as much as possible. The great finale was contrapuntal in character from (almost) the outset. Mozart’s learned Fuxian side fuses imperceptibly with his expressive energy to produce something quite astonishing here – and for the most part, this is just how it sounded on this occasion. Harding’s Jupiter was festal; this is, of course, C major. It exhibited a fine swagger – and why not? And perhaps most importantly, it was urgent. Harding – and his orchestra – also displayed a good ear for oft-overlooked orchestral detail, without making it seem like perverse point-scoring. A true sense of dramatic purpose characterised the movement’s sweep and here there were no disruptions to the greater line. The second repeat was taken, which in most Classical symphonies seems at best a waste of time, but in this case is quite justified on account of the coda. There was a strange instance of flute ornamentation during the recapitulation, which was not a slip, since it happened on the first and second time around. Where I felt a slight sense of anti-climax, oddly enough, was in the astonishing coda with its quintuple invertible counterpoint. There is much to be said for permitting the contrapuntal miracle to speak for itself but Harding might just have pushed it a little more dramatically, especially given the added tension arising from the second repeat. In that context, the blaring of the trumpets sounded rather overdone. Nevertheless, this remained an estimable, winningly youthful account.