Salzburg Festival (4) - Saint François d’Assise, 23 August 2026

Felsenreitschule

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus

The Angel – Lauranne Oliva
Saint François – Philippe Sly
The Leper – Sean Panikkar
Brother Léon – Russell Braun
Brother Massée – Léo Vermot-Desroches
Brother Élie – Aaron-Casey Gould
Brother Bernard – Willard White
Brother Sylvestre – Marius Aron
Brother Rufin – Ivan Lyvch

Saint Francis’s father – Ingo Arbeiter
Saint Francis’s mother – Ingeborg Haidinger
Leper (actor) – Georg Schwamberger

Angels – Eirck Godoy, Ilaria Quaglia, Nicholas Sambou, Davide Troiani, Lisa Vilret, Sebastian Zamaro
Brothers – Felix Chang, Antoine Effroy, Nikos Fragkou, Emanuele Ospelt, Davide Sportelli, Emile Wendt

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera (chorus director: Jozef Chabroň)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Salzburg’s new Saint François d’Assise, directed by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Maxime Pascal, with Philippe Sly in the title role, single-handedly justifies the somewhat mixed operatic results of Markus Hinterhäuser’s now concluded intendancy. This was an event, an experience not only of the highest, most challenging artistic order, but extended beyond that, building to a transcendental encounter in the third act that I am sure will remain with those who underwent, no participated in, it for the rest of their lives. That is in large part a matter of the work, of course, Messiaen’s avowed summa; or rather, the work was an indispensable fons et origo for it. But the palpable ambition, commitment and – doubtless in various forms – belief shown from all concerned were equally crucial. Taking steps, as it does, not merely beyond the at-best wonderful, yet also too-often-infuriating aesthetic of opera, but beyond Wagner’s renewal of Attic tragedy and Schoenberg’s theological transformation of Wagnerian music drama, to an opera that arguably belongs less in our opera houses even than Parsifal or Moses und Aron, and yet in its rebuke and challenges alike to them helps justify their continued existence and promise them new life, Saint François may be a one-off, but it is an absolutely necessary one-off. More to the point, it felt and, quite simply, was so here, an inspired contribution to the eight-hundredth anniversary of St Francis’s death, as well as a crucial demonstration of what art, religion, and humanity can and must do if they are to survive—and to be worthy of survival. 

The total commitment of Sly’s performance in its physical extremity as well as its astounding musical range was foremost among the wonders experienced. Call it inspiration, call it faith, call it what you will: here was an artist responding to and creating something extraordinary—in tandem with his fellow artists and the work itself. Lauranne Oliva’s Angel was a voice and presence of radiant clarity, as unanswerable and unknowable as the place from which (s)he had come. Russell Braun’s beautifully sung Brother Leo offered a more attainable or at least approachable example, imploring and certain in faith, ineffably human as, like the rest of the brothers, he sought the way. Willard White’s Brother Bernard imparted a striking, equally touching voice of older faith. All presented voices and faces of a community, a path, that connected us to the world of saints, angels, and divinity. 

The opening of Castellucci’s staging offered a frame closer to more typical contemporary opera as anything we should proceed to see (or hear), but quite rightly one soon forgotten, even discarded. In a museum – yes, our museum of musical works – the young Francis was called to leave all behind: his fine clothes, art, family (his father reappearing briefly in the final scene, but no longer in any sense the focus) himself to begin the route to the beyond: first beyond society, even beyond established monasticism, and ultimately Beyond. Shedding his fine clothes, as did the historical Francis, he was born anew, as were his followers, in a water both of baptism and of, straightforwardly, elemental water, pouring from the ceiling and, in one of many striking images of Castelluccian installation-drama, apparently petrified, water emerging miraculously as if from a fountain. Brothers, singers and dancers alike, joined him, likewise losing all, one shaved onstage, in the promise of gaining all—through a life of obedience, prayer, belief, charity, and art that is heavenly rather than temporal. Such is no easy path, of course, and only Francis could truly take on the ultimate challenge, that of Christ’s Cross, but others would participate as they could: whether in baking bread during Lauds in onstage ovens, its unmistakeable aroma inviting us to the refectory for physical interval sustenance; in receiving the Angel and its questions about predestination; in accepting not only the Leper, but his leprosy as part of God’s creation, a blow against Cathar and other heresy; in wandering, even wallowing in a mud, a filth as far removed from Francis’s fine origins as could be imagined; and of course with the birds and other of God’s creatures (all featured at different points onstage: wolf (of Gubbio), bird, and sacrificial lambs, as well as representations). 

There was much more, yet nothing was hurried, the production taking its necessary time as did the musical performance. If some of the visual displays might have worked better, ironically, in a museum – a giant picture, for instance, of a child regaining the ability to hear – then many others were deeply touching, not least a confession to which it was difficult not to assent, quasi-heretically, in artistic communion: ‘Je t’aime, Olivier, immense artiste’. The birds in Francis’s sermon took on new, tragic meaning when shown, both onstage as near death and on screen in funerary naming, in reference to the ecological devastation of our age. But for the most part, the preaching was not Castelucci’s, or ours, but that of Francis and perhaps something lying beyond even him. This was not a place for argument, for discussion, but for mystery and for truth. We could recognise that more readily, however strenuous the demand, in the acceptance of the leper (acted by an old man, apparently wasted away, yet sung and doubled already by an angelic Sean Panikkar in white), mirrored towards the close when the latter returned to wash Francis on his way to the beyond. The ravishing beauty of Panikkar’s singing added further levels of theological as well as dramatic understanding, as of course did the Vienna Philharmonic’s celestial invitation (and those of the ondes Martenot, played by Nathalie Forget, Augustin Viard, and Cécile Lartigau). The image of Panikkar as angelic leper emanation, to borrow slightly from Stockhausen, kneading together Francis and physical Leper under a cloth for them to emerge in quasi-communion, even quasi-transubstantiated, as living counterpart to the bread whose baking (and oven steam) similarly pervaded the Felsenreitschule, made perfect liturgical sense in the moment—a key condition, of course, for any form of liturgical acceptance, not necessarily to be expected out of context. Ritual lived, brought to life, and yet, as with Our Lord, ultimately pointed to death—and thereafter resurrection. 

For later, in the stigmata scene, we were unmistakeably in the world of dark mysteries it was and could not be given to us to understand. As with Francis, we must simply submit. A chill orchestral wind summoned by Pascal and the orchestra both formed a foundation for and intensified the dark images onstage, all having changed as we approached the beginning of the end. In dance, image, and music, it might almost have been a black (or better, dark) mass, a reminder that true sacrilege may closer approach – an essential term here – the sacred than so much of our banal, daily lives, ‘religious’ or ‘secular’. Not everything, here as in art and religion more generally, was necessarily to be understood or experienced representationally. Was that apparently sacramental mound from which so much dirt and darkness came anything of the kind? Did it summon the grave later to be dug by skeletal figures, one of them Francis? Or were these the wrong questions to ask, evidence that we had not yet been called? Red may have signalled blood; it may simply, joyously, agonisingly, have been red (to synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes alike). Angel wings were surely, though, on at least one level what they seemed to be: providing, and of Providence, something towards which Francis, once further shorn of strength and submitted to those dark figures (of Hell?) could reach, ultimately to join a company of Heaven that may have been easier, or at least less impossible, for Francis’s mediaeval mind than ours to grasp. 

And yet, this is a work of modernity, a singular version no doubt, but no less modern for that. Messiaen engaged with the newest as well as the oldest music; he instructed many of its composers, as well as writing it himself. Pascal left us in no doubt he head internalised this musical language, its capabilities, and its emotions, to bring it, like Francis – and us – to new life. Birds, for Messiaen God’s finest musicians, sang more clearly than all, uninhibited, acting from their essence, knowing no other. This we heard from all sections of the orchestra, gamelan-percussion in near-surround sound included. Counterpoint and harmony mesmerised as Creation itself returned to life. But there was more to it than that single miracle. There was existential dread, harmonic and timbral; there was radiant, human joy; there was a new sense of time; there was the Angel’s unearthly viol. Ultimately, there was the coming together of all, in orchestral and choral divine encounter, an experience so overwhelming one felt one had actually met God. That did not happen by itself, through mere grace, for this was still art: the work had been prepared, paced, and permitted to speak for itself in its succession of tableaux. Its inevitability, though, was undeniable. In the numinous, astonishing, overwhelming closing bars, instruments, creatures, alleluias, and other songs of praise resounding, we came together as the angels had promised Francis: poetry and music leading us, as with Bach, to God Himself. This is not the only thing opera or art can and should do; but it felt, for many hours after, that it might (yet) be the most important.

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

Felsenreitschule

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

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

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Salzburg Festival (3) - Le Balcon/Pascal: Nono, Boulez, and Stockhausen, 19 August 2025

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Nono: A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum
Boulez: sur Incises
Stockhausen: Klavierstück XIV – ‘Geburtstag-Formel’
Boulez: …explosante-fixe…

Julie Brunet-Jailly (flute)

Alphonse Cemin (piano)

Augustin Muller (IRCAM electronics)

Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion)

Le Balcon

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Pierre Boulez’s broader musical-cultural legacy lies everywhere, both in what he achieved and what, sadly, he did not. Quite rightly, in this centenary year we are taking time to focus more specifically on his musical works. From his 1960 Salzburg debut (Stockhausen, Webern, and Boulez, in the presence of Herbert von Karajan), the Festival has long experienced and participated in both—and especially from 1992, at the invitation of Gerard Mortier and Hans Landesmann. I shall rue till my dying day having passed up the opportunity to hear his Moses und Aron, on my first, student visit. It was inevitable, given the choice of one opera, that I would opt for Mozart, yet nevertheless… Here, in any case, the Festival’s centenary tribute will focus on both strands, or rather on three or more, the third being the presence and influence even in non-presence of electronics both in his music and in that broader legacy, exemplified by IRCAM and represented here by Augustin Muller and Sylvain Cadars. 

The mini-series ‘A Pierre’ opened with this concert, which in turn opened in pleasing symmetry with Luigi Nono’s sixtieth birthday tribute for his colleague, A Pierre. Dell Azzurro silenzio, inquietum, for contrabass flute, contrabass clarinet, and live electronics. One instrument entered, then the other: were they playing together or separately? Had they merged? One asked that even before the advent of electronics, or was it? Differences were almost, yet never quite, imperceptible, a message dell-ascolto from the somewhat non-Boulezian world of Prometeo. One was drawn in to listen, in harmony, in polyphony, ever transforming, ever deeper. I could have sworn at one point I heard voices – as in vocal music – and perhaps, in a way, I did. The role of electronics was ‘for’ Pierre, at least, as the Venetian waves lapped and almost Mahlerian vistas opened up before our ears. 

It is an obvious point, but I do not think it had quite registered with me, at least experientially, quite how much difference the performing space would make to a performance of sur Incises. My ears, doubtless my eyes, associate it above all with Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, where I have heard Daniel Barenboim conduct it more than once (including the hall’s opening concert) with his own created Boulez Ensemble. In a more conventional smallish hall, not in the round, lines seemed more obviously to lead from the conductor—and, in a sense, seated not far behind Maxime Pascal, from the ensemble too—with clear consequences for experience of many aspects of the work ‘itself’. Whether it was that, or the performances of Le Balcon and Pascal—it may have been both—that made the opening section sound quite so Debussyan, I am not sure. It came as a subsequent shock to my ears to hear quite so many floating roots, if you will, in Scriabin in the writing for pianos of the following section. Perhaps it was simply me; never underestimate the role of your own preoccupations or chance connections. However strictly organised, listening as well as composition and performance will break free. When rhythm took its place as first among equals, Stravinsky came most forcefully to mind and, a little more surprisingly, Prokofiev, although then I remember hearing Boulez express admiration for the piano writing in the composer’s concertos. These where ghosts, though, rather than definite influences, and soon one felt—at least I did—fully immersed, albeit actively immersed as, I flattered myself, a participant, enticed and welcomed by performers and work alike. What also struck me was the liminal passages in which not only classic parameters but time and music seemed stretched, even bent: Debussy again, perhaps, even Chopin. Resonance, in more than one sense, played its part too. Waves of a different kind were felt, not only heard, sound and music moving through space as well as time, as Gurnemanz might (not) have put it. 

Following some much needed fresh air, we returned to the hall (the same hall that hosted Boulez’s 1960 debut) for Stockhausen’s contribution to that same 1985 Baden-Baden birthday tribute: Klavierstück XIV, later to be heard as part of the composer’s Montag (for various reasons, a work Boulez was unlikely ever to have conducted). My heart went out to Alphonse Cemin when, just before he was about to begin, a lengthy telephonic intervention rang out. Such was its length that, at least for the audience, it became quite amusing. Was it Karlheinz himself, attempting to dial in from Sirius? When Cemin, a worthy successor to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, gave his fine performance, we were immediately in a different world from anything heard in the first half, though the whimsy of that introduction perhaps persisted a little in his verbal contributions. Here, unquestionably, was a miniature drama, though not only that, and in its ‘birthday formula’ mode, an intriguing set-up for Boulez’s own …explosante-fixe…, founded as it is on what has reasonably been considered a compositional ‘kit’. It was also music unquestionably ‘for’ the piano and to be enjoyed as such by performer and listeners alike in something not so very distant from what we know as music theatre. 

And so, to …explosante-fixe…, which I had not heard live for a little while: the last time, I think, ten years ago for Boulez’s 90^th anniversary, at the Proms. Julie Brunet-Jailly was joined by fellow, ‘shadow’ flautists and other members of Le Balcon in the fullest ensemble of the evening, as well of course as our friends from IRCAM and Pascal. It worked very differently, perhaps better, in the space than sur Incises; or maybe it was more that my ears had adjusted. The immediacy, even straightforward volume, nonetheless took a little getting used to, though only a little. The alchemy of sound in space proved quite magical, even seductive, as if presaging Boulez’s own, later Szymanowskian enchantment. Here was not only a labyrinth, but something between riot and delirium within a labyrinth that was always transforming before our ears: itself somewhere between Pli and pli and the orchestral Notations, which, I suppose, is where the work lies in Boulez’s œuvre. The bending of time I had felt in sur Incises continued, here in a world of very different, dazzling, (quasi-)orchestral fantasy that it was difficult not to think almost classically ‘French’. (Perhaps the presence of French performers contributed to that.) Dimming the lights for passages of ‘pure’ electronics was a theatrical touch, yet a winning one: in highlighting the organ pipes at the back of the stage, it almost suggested a role for that instrument, though alas not. I certainly heard things I could not recall from previous encounters: unexpected guests from The Rite of Spring, the sage’s procession turned post-Sixties psychedelic (or was that Messiaenic)? There was a sense, I fancied, of an almost Bachian mirroring and inversion in the electronics: not necessarily literally, but a quality felt or imagined. Other aspects comfortably, yet never too comfortably returned: those trills and tremolos, for instance. And I realised, only at the close, one thing that made this a relatively unusual soundworld for Boulez ensemble music. Obvious when you think about it: no percussion. So long as we continue to listen, we shall never cease to learn—even the most basic of things.

 

LSO Chamber Ensemble et al./Pascal - Boulez, 27 January 2025

Milton Court

Initiale
Messagesquisse
Dérive 1
Sonatine for flute and piano
Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore (violin)

David Cohen (cello)

Gareth Davies (flute)

Joseph Horvat (piano)

Sound Intermedia

LSO Chamber Ensemble

Guildhall School Cellos

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

The Boulez centenary celebrations are underway. If London’s – and much of the rest of the world’s – response so far looks more muted than one might have hoped, something is better than nothing and there is all the more reason to cherish what we have. Following an afternoon symposium (oddly timed on a Monday, when most of us must work) the Barbican Centre offered an excellent chamber concert of five works, from LSO musicians and friends, directed where appropriate by Maxime Pascal.

What could have been better as an opening than the 1987 brass fanfare Initiale, which I had last heard at the opening of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal thirty years later? Although Milton Court lacks a ready possibility – at least unless electronics are employed – for the Gabrieli-like spatial element deployed in Frank Gehry’s Berlin hall, the LSO players’ balcony elevation nonetheless signalled development of our concert expectations beyond Boulez’s ‘museum’ of the musical past. Metrical complexity, rubato implied through exactitude, was there from the off. More kaleidoscopic and varied in mood than your typical fanfare, its cascading, proliferating echoes of Répons helped establish aural expectations for what was to come.

Messagesquisse was given by David Cohen and six cellists from the Guildhall School (Gabriel Francis-Deqhani, Kosta Popovic, Nathaniel Horton, James Conway, Theo Bently Curtin, and Seth Collin), conducted by Pascal with properly Boulezian precision and commitment. I was again intrigued and delighted by the tricks music could play on my perception—or perhaps the other way round. Initially, I could have sworn one cello was not playing, only to see and then hear that it was, at a pitch I had mistakenly thought another was: a smaller-scale sense, perhaps, of that sense of spatial magic squares that would so inform a later masterwork such as sur Incises (via, perhaps, common inspiration ultimately in Les Noces). Brimming with melody, impassioned of mood, harmonically compelling: it was everything Boulez is, and everything his detractors would say his music is not. Dynamic contrasts and all manner of other post-Beethovenian dialectics abounded in ‘organised delirium’. Contagious proliferation of a single line suggested at times a very French inheritance in the music of the clavecinistes. At times, I even thought of Nono. And what performances these were, reminding any who might need it of the crucial role of performance in Boulez’s music.

The shifting transformations of Dérive 1 proved an similar yet different delight, music spiralling before our ears in a mesmerising tour of aural pleasure. The temptation was to ask for more, which of course we should eventually have in its successor, Dérive 2. This music, though, spoke for itself, no mere precursor but a masterwork of proliferation in its own right.

The Sonatine for flute and piano received an outstanding and confounding performance from Gareth Davies and Joseph Havlet. No one would dispute the work’s allure, yet the array of elements in its first movement that might – just might – have to them something of the more neoclassical Schoenberg (and Debussy) seemed more than ever to rejoice in the necessity of internal and eternal explosion and destruction. It might not sound quite ‘like’ the Second Piano Sonata, but the Sonatine’s progress suggested ever closer kinship, emotionally and intellectually. Here, it felt, was instantiated a post-Notations world of infinite possibility.

Last up was Benjamin Maruise Gilmore with Ian Dearden and Jonathan Green of Sound Intermedia in Anthèmes 2. Its world of violin and electronics sounded, like much else, both old and new: not so very different from Messagesquisse or other works with solo and double/shadow, and yet… Echoes expected and unexpected beguiled and surprised as music from plainchant to Messiaen and beyond ricocheted around us. Indeed, an unsuspected harmonic sweetness suggested what remain less acknowledged lessons learned from Boulez’s teacher. As waves of sound lapped upon our consciousnesses, it was Debussy’s La Mer, endlessly transformed, that next suggested itself as fons et origo; that and, of course, the composer’s own endless imagination. The museum lives and develops; so do music and performance history of Boulez, one of its newer recruits.

Salzburg Festival (3) – ORF Vienna RSO/Pascal: Nono and Dallapiccola, 25 July 2024

Felsenreitschule

Nono: Il canto sospeso
Dallapiccola: Il prigioniero (concert performance)


Caroline Wettergreen (soprano)
Freya Apffelstaedt (contralto)
Robin Tritschler (tenor)
Tobias Moretti (reciter)

Mother – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Prisoner – Georg Nigl
Jailer, Grand Inquisitor – John Daszak
First Priest – Andrew Lepri Meyer
Second Priest – Timo Janzen

Bavarian Radio Chorus (chorus director: Peter Dijkstra)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

If the ‘mainstream’ operatic fare of this year’s Salzburg Festival looks a little thin on paper – certainly for those of us resistant to the alleged charms of Tsar Currentzis’s new clothes – this concert of two masterpieces of mid-twentieth-century music proved a more or less unqualified success. It clearly made a deep impression on the Felsenreitschule audience, bearing witness in ways faithful to, yet extending, the intentions of the works’ creators: Luigi Nono, this year celebrating his centenary, and Luigi Dallapiccola, twenty years his senior.

Performances of Nono’s music have proved a welcome, sustained focus of the Festival during Markus Hinterhäuser’s intendancy. Il canto sospeso, once past a (very) brief early passage of uncharacteristically tentative playing from the ORF Symphony Orchestra under Maxime Pascal, received a performance of deep comprehension and commitment, framed by readings by Tobias Moretti of the texts set by Nono in what he considered, as in the music of Gesualdo, to be a ‘pluridimensional whole’, a counterpoint of sounds in musical declamation. Even in that first, orchestral movement, the burning humanity of Nono’s vision seemed to possess all who listened (and played). Taking its leave from Webern, Schoenberg, and Mahler too, the music’s fragility, darkness, and perhaps hope were rendered immanent. The second movement’s a cappella writing from the excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus offered a contrast remarkable for its different yet complementary conception of beauty and what – terrible and wonderful things alike – that might mean, or at least be. Solo vocal lyricism, Freya Apffelstaedt’s deep mezzo and Robin Tritschler’s passionate elegance included, cast its own spell as modernist fragments both retained their integrity and constructed something beyond themselves. The expressive quality of listening as well as writing and performing music can rarely have felt more apparent.

The Dies irae-like sixth movement could hardly have reflected Esther Srul’s 1942 witness more powerfully in the most ‘direct setting’; indeed, it would surely have done less so.

The gates are opening. Our murderers are here. Dressed in black. They’re wearing white gloves on their dirty hands. They drive us out of the synagogue in pairs. Dear sisters and brothers, how hard it is to say goodbye to this beautiful life. You who are left alive, never forget our innocent little Jewish street. Sisters and brothers, avenge us on our murderers.

Sweet musical agony at its close spoke of overwhelming pain within, turned inward and outward, as did a spellbinding, harrowing account of the next movement, for alto, chorus, and orchestra, in which every note as well as every interval seemed to take upon itself the weight of the world. Following Moretti’s last readings, the final two movements sounded as if more tender, readily communicative progenitors of Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, profound differences in aesthetic and technique notwithstanding. Closing silence, magical yet fragile, may not have ‘transcended’ – can or should anything, following the horrors of which this music was born? – but it moved nonetheless, not unlike Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, which Nono greatly admired. 

Dallapiccola came from the generation in between Schoenberg and his posthumous son-in-law Nono, a living link to complement Nuria Schoenberg-Nono. In Con Luigi Dallapiccola for six percussionists and live electronics (1979), Nono honoured the memory of his predecessor, whom he had first met in 1947, the year in which Dallapiccola completed his one-act opera. Il prigioniero, here unstaged and seemingly in no need of staging, so powerful was the performance (as it usually is) from its twelve-note Puccini opening to the final question, ‘La libertà?’ and similar, unbroken silence to that which had followed Nono’s cantata.

There lies a world in between, though: one that belies the work’s brevity—again, as in Nono and indeed Wozzeck, whose example looms large. The passionate precision of that opening was matched and heightened by similar passion and precision from Tanja Ariana Baumgartner as the prisoner’s Mother, so vivid one could ‘see’ the scene she painted before us, dream of Philip II and all. The chorus’s interventions overtly reinstated a liturgical quality already implicit in Nono. All the while, the workings of the ‘system’ seemed not only to mirror but also to create an antinomy between freedom and determinism Dallapiccola may have inherited from Schoenberg, but which he made indelibly his own. Mahlerian marching, Tosca-like torture, and the twin contrast and complementary between the Prisoner’s anger and his Gaoler’s wheedling insinuation sent us hurtling toward the tragic denouement, hope unmasked in devastating inversion of Fidelio as the greatest torture of all. John Daszak and Georg Nigl gave defiantly un-score-bound performances, to which one might possibly have harboured purist objections on paper, but any such objections evaporated into thin air in the heat of such committed performance. Deafening bells and sonically disappointing organ likewise mattered not a jot in practice. This was a confession to which all, listeners and performers alike, must contribute and did.

Salzburg Festival (7) - The Greek Passion, 22 August 2023

Felsenreitschule

Grigoris - Gábor Bretz
Manolios - Sebastian Kohlhepp
Katerina - Sara Jakubiak
Yannakos - Charles Workman
Lenio - Christina Gansch
Andonis - Matteo Ivan Rašić
Michelis - Matthäus Schmidlechner
Kostandis - Alejandro Baliñas Vietes
Panais - Julian Hubbard
Nikolio - Aljoscha Lennert
Old Woman - Helena Resker
The Patriarcheas - Luke Stoker
Ladas - Robert Dölle
Fotis - Łukasz Goliński
Old Man - Scott Wilde
Despinio - Teona Todua

Director - Simon Stone
Set designs - Lizzie Clachan
Costumes - Mel Page
Lighting - Nick Schlieper
Dramaturgy - Christian Arseni

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir (chorus director: Wolfgang Götz)

Angelika Prokopp Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus

Salzburg’s new production of Bohuslav Martinů‘s opera The Greek Passion has much going for it, but alas one major thing against, at least for me. The latter I shall come to, but let us first consider the positives. The theme of the opera and Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel from which it is adopted could not be more timely. A tragedy in which refugees are rejected by a stern, unbending, mendaciously ‘Christian’ society, shown for what it is by the ostracism and death of one of its own for showing proper Christian charity, has a multiplicity of resonances today. It surely follows on well in the wake of Nono’s Intolleranza, which Covid had me miss.

Performances were generally very good, often excellent. Maxime Pascal, known primarily for more overtly modernist music, a complete cycle of Stockhausen’s LICHT underway with his ensemble Le Balcon, could hardly have offered more committed advocacy at the helm of the Vienna Philharmonic. A wild, often bewildering, variety of musical styles was vividly characterised. Playing was sharp, warm, weighty, delicate, and so much more, as required. Choruses were equally impressive, hymnal and more violent confrontation of two great masses of human beings brought to equally vivid aural life. 

Sebastian Kohlhepp gave a powerful, vulnerable portrayal of Manolios, the shepherd given the role of Christ in the village Passion play and ultimately murdered for taking Christ at His word. Gábor Bretz made for an implacable priestly foe as Grigoris, whose social rigidity and machinations set the tragedy in motion. Charles Workman as the compassionate pedlar Yannakos, Łukasz Goliński as Fotis, the priest at the head of the refugees, Christina Gansch as Lenio, who transfers her affections from Manolios, and Sara Jakubiak as the other object of his affections, preparing to play the role of Mary Magdalene, all impressed in detailed interpretations, well sung and acted. So did others in smaller roles, of which there are a good few.

Simon Stone’s production did its job well enough too, perhaps at its best in using the great space of the Felsenreitschule stage to show the two communities at odds. Painting a wall with the words ‘REFUGEES OUT’ is not subtle, but subtlety is hardly what is called for here. The appearance of live animals, a donkey and goat included, onstage brought back unwelcome thoughts of Francesca Zambello’s School of Zeffirelli Carmen. It seemed to entertain the audience, especially when the donkey refused to budge, but what it offered beyond that, I really do not know. I wondered whether more might have been done to help the innocent viewer understand who was who on a more detailed, personal level, but responsibility for that really lay elsewhere.

That brings me, alas, to the real culprit for me: the work itself. This is the second, 1961 version of the work, written after rejection by Covent Garden. According to Michael Beckerman’s programme note, the first ‘is considered more experimental, is perhaps more conventionally dramatic, and has much more spoken dialogue.’ For the first two of those criteria, I cannot help but wish we had heard the first, for what we saw and heard was anything but ground-breaking and, far more important, lacking in the basic dramatic tools to which it seemed to aspire. There is nothing discernible in the way of musical characterisation, making Beckerman’s hyperbolic claim ‘Martinů had much in common with Mozart’ especially unfortunate. (I could probably suggest points I have in common with Dame Joan Collins, but that would not make me a natural Alexis.) There is little in the way of musical continuity, and the libretto, Martinů‘s own, is at times shockingly bad. I had to check that it was not a hamfisted ENO translation. I sympathise: I could not write a libretto in, say, German; I doubt I could write one in English. But the composer’s word-setting is also un-idiomatic. And, to be fair, I do not try to write operas. I do not think it would be helpful to go into great detail and should note this was one of the most enthusiastic receptions I encountered at this year’s Festival. Mine was a minority view, though shared still more vehemently by my companion.

I had assumed the spoken scenes were Stone’s, it seeming unlikely Martinů would have used, for instance, the word ‘donkeyfucker’, for instance. Whoever wrote them, they added nothing to what we knew already, coming across mostly as an attempt to sound ‘edgy’. Alas, everything seemed at best caught between largely incomparable stools. To do something for refugees is, of course, admirable and necessary. Despite the obvious objections, that can include artistic endeavour, indeed arguably must. Intolleranza is a case in point. It would need, though, to be more convincing than this. In the meantime, donation to a refugee centre would be a better way forward.

Donnerstag, Opéra Comique, 17 November 2018

 Salle Favart

Image: Vincent Pontet

Michael (tenor) – Damien Bigourdan, Safir Behloul

Michael (trumpet) – Henri Deléger

Michael (dancer) – Emmanuelle Grach

Eva (soprano) – Léa Trommenschlager, Elise Chauvin

Eva (basset horn) – Iris Zerdoud

Eva (dancer) – Suzanne Meyer

Luzifer (bass) – Damien Pass

Luzifer (trombone) – Mathieu Adam

Luzifer (dancer) – Jamil Attar

Michael’s accompanist (piano) – Alphonse Cemin

Swallow Clowns (clarinets) – Alice Caubit, Ghislain Roffat

Two Youths (saxophones) – Eléonore Brundell

Old Woman – Bernadette Le Saché

Messanger – Antoine Amariutei

Nurses – Maxime Morel, Alphonse Cemin

Doctor – Simon Guidicelli

Child Michael – Ilion Thierrée

Luzifer bass (Damien Pass), Michael tenor (Damien Bigourdan)
Image: Stéfan Brion

What a year it has been for Karlheinz Stockhausen. The ninety-year-old composer from Sirius seems in this, the year of his ninetieth birthday celebrations, to be as strongly with us as ever. Berlin’s annual Musikfest did him proud with four concerts, three of which I was privileged to attend. (See here and here for reviews.) The Paris-based orchestra Le Balcon has, under the direction of Maxime Pascal, launched a series of his complete Licht operas, starting here with the French premiere of Donnerstag in a co-production between the Opéra Comique, Le Balcon, and the Opéra national de Bordeaux. It is planned to reach its conclusion in 2024. On the evidence of this performance – and indeed of Benjamin Lazar’s production – it will, from beginning to end, prove an absolute must for anyone with a remotely serious interest in opera.

Image: Vincent Pontet

Donnerstag may come fourth in the seven days of creation – and thus be expected take that place in a full ‘cycle’, if we must use the confusing, circular term. It was written first, though (give or take a single scene from Dienstag) and to my mind benefits – at the very least, is done no harm – from being placed first like this. At the opening of the treatment of Licht in his book on Stockhausen’s music, Robin Maconie writes: ‘As the first completed opera of LICHT, the day in which, drawing on his own life experiences, the composer lays out his philosophical agenda for the entire week, Donnerstag aus LICHT is at once the most personal in its declarations and the most troubling and controversial in its ethical and spiritual implications. In as much as the opera has a theme, the theme is Kindheit: education, upbringing, self-determination, and spiritual growth.’ Much of that came through strongly – in both musical and dramatic fashion. Indeed, as one would expect in so post-Wagnerian a work, the distinction made no sense. What certainly made an impression – ‘sense’ will be in the eyes and ears of the beholders, the listeners – was the overriding idea, modernist (?) fragmentary tendencies notwithstanding, of self-formation, of a Bildung that is, has been, and, doubtless ever shall be both classical and anything but.

Alphonse Cemin (Nurse), Eva soprano (Léa Trommenschlager), Maxime Morel (Nurse),  Luzifer bass (Damien Pass) 

Image: Meng Phu

There was, perhaps, something necessarily didactic to the first act. (I think one may, even should, accept a degree of essentialism when it comes to Stockhausen. Can one really fail to do so in the German tradition of which he is unquestionably part?) So it felt, at any rate, to me. Following our call to observance in a very particular version of ‘Donnerstags-Gruss’, heard throughout the house but faintly, impinging upon our consciousness, almost switching us or our receptivity on, the first act proceeded almost as if it were a director’s metatheatrical intervention, drawing upon the composer’s biography to elucidate. Except, of course, and with every respect to Lazar’s fine work, the director in that sense remained Stockhausen himself. We were free to draw whatever lessons we wished – none, I suppose, should we not have wished to do so – from Michael’s experience and education, his navigation of boundaries between his father’s (militaristic yet also theatrical) example and his mother’s (musical, carnal, and also theatrical).

Iris Zerdoud (Mondeva), Damien Bigorudan (Michael)
Image: Stéfan Brion

Michael’s coming of age, the loss of his mother and brother, was Stockhausen’s but not his: it was, in Orphic tradition, that of music too. In Wagner’s tradition, moreover, it was that of art as opposed to different arts: the Gesamtkunstwerk, if you will, a term often more suited to Wagner’s successors (and indeed to his predecessors’ Romantic aspirations) than to his own dramas and theories. Gesture in the traditional form of dance – as opposed to the broader Wagnerian transformation into staging and/or production – played here and elsewhere not only a crucial role but a role that questions and unifies, just as does singing, just as does instrumental performance. We see, hear, think of, even dream the relationships between these outstanding performers of different types. (Or are they different? Is that but our fragmented fantasy?) When Mondeva, whatever her relationship to mother Eva, showed her talons, sounded her basset horn, yielded to the young Siegfried (sorry, Michael), the hallowed German Romantic forest or memories thereof came back to life – albeit here subtly, without a hint of bad nineteenth- or twentieth-century to them. No wonder, then, he proceeded to pass his exams with flying colours. A musician had been dreamed, formed, made incarnate.

Maxime Morel (tuba), Henri Deléger (trumpet)
Image: Stéfan Brion

The instrumental fantasy of the second act, ‘Michaels Reise um die Erde’, as much perhaps a concerto for orchestra as for solo trumpeter (here the outstanding Henri Deléger), offered in many ways the greatest of contrasts. Having been ‘educated’, were we now to ‘enjoy’ – to tour the world, our worlds, other worlds (dramatic, galactic, etc.)? Yes, but not only yes. For the strange rhymes, the peculiar memories and remembrances, of the first act had formed us. There is nothing random, nothing arbitrary to Stockhausen – no more here in Licht than in any work of so-called ‘total serialism’. The composer’s formulae were doing their work, guiding us, in a total(itarian) way serving very much to remind us of his lineage. Michael’s instrumental companions, antagonists, interlocutors, guided yet liberated by Pascal, by Lazar, and – you have guessed it – by Stockhausen, played games with themselves, with us, dreamed of themselves, of others, most likely of us.

Eva (soprano) Léa Trommenschlager (act I), 

Eva (dancer) Suzanne Meyer, 

Eva (soprano) Elise Chauvin (act III), 

Michael (trumpet) Henri Deléger, 

Michael (dancer) Emmanuelle Grach 

Image: Meng Phu

For this, whether one likes it or no, is a world of mysticism: a mysticism prepared and finally explicit in the third act, in a ‘return’ that, like all returns, is as much concerned with what is new as with what is old. (‘Sonate, que veux-me tu?’ That, among many other things.) Choirs as celestial as those in Bach, theology as heretical as in Wagner and as unanswerable as in Messiaen (and Bach!), musical virtuosity, theatrical accomplishment: those and so much more, inviting yet rejecting such easy comparisons, recreated a world we both knew and did not. And, of course, they (re-)invited in our constant companion(s), Luzifer – again, of song, of instrument (trombone), of dance. There was victory, but at what cost? There were rejoicing and certainty – again, at what cost? This was the very stuff of drama as much as of ritual, of fantasy as much as of truth, of heroic dissent as much as harmonious union. Stockhausen was reborn both our eyes and ears.

I have, I confess, grown a little impatient with armchair listeners continuing to peddle the hackneyed line that the Stockhausen of Licht onwards demonstrated a sad, megalomaniacal decline, whilst acknowledging when pressed that they have never actually attended a performance of the Licht operas. There may be good reason for their not having done so; it does not, however, follow that such critics can possibly in a position to dismiss the works. No more than any other opera – rather less than many in the so-called ‘repertoire’ – should any of these works be considered as a ‘purely musical’ work. It may or may not be revealing simply to listen, simply to read the score. To give these extraordinary works a proper chance, though, one must engage theatrically with them. In turn, we need (excellent) performances and stagings to do so. For that, and for much else, we should be grateful indeed to the Opéra Comique and this intrepid band of artists. No one there will forget this, nor them, in a hurry.

Luzifer dancer (Jamil Attar), Luzifer trombone (Mathieu Adam),
Michael trumpet (Henri Deléger), Michael dancer (Emmanuelle Grach)
Image: Meng Phu

Such was not the least of the messages one might have taken, at the close, from the boy Michael learning from his mature selves and the rest of the heavenly cosmos, what the past, present, and future might entail. Enlightenment, Licht as well as Bildung, was seen as well as heard before our eyes, ears, and much else. I have concentrated here far more on the totality, on the overall ‘effect’, rather than on individual contributions; I hope that will not be taken amiss, as a failure to acknowledge their generally outstanding quality. Such was the collegial commitment of all concerned – the audience included, if the wild enthusiasm of its final reception were anything to go by. I have no doubt that it was. Stockhausen, ultimately, tends no more to provoke doubts than Bach. He is what he is – and this was what it was, something quite out of the ordinary. As we retreated into the Place Boieldieu for an 'invisible' musical farewell that spoke or rather sang as much of Gabrieli as new galaxies, that was something we simply, or not so simply, knew. Not entirely unlike the composer into whose cult we had been (re)admitted.