Barenboim/Nouno - Boulez, Attahir, Manoury, Chaker, and Roustom, 12 October 2025

Purcell Room

Boulez: Anthèmes 1
Benjamin Attahir: Retour à Tipasa
Philippe Manoury: Partita II
Layale Chaker: Before bloom
Kareem Roustom: Pavane (pour les enfantes défuntes) (UK premiere)
Boulez: Anthèmes 2

Michael Barenboim (violin, viola)

Gilbert Nouno (live electronics)

Michael Barenboim’s Sunday afternoon Purcell Room concert, given with Gilbert Nouno, offered not only a welcome new standpoint to the Boulez centenary celebrations, but also the United Kingdom premiere of Kareem Roustom’s Pavane (pour les enfantes défuntes), for viola and live electronics, Barenboim’s own commission for ‘something for the children of Gaza’. Words, music, money, anything at all may seem hopelessly insufficient in the face of genocide, and of course they are. That does not mean, though, that we should not bear witness as we can. Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw does not efface, let alone undo, what was done, nor does it intend to. Extending his father’s humanitarianism and indeed as much in the tradition of Edward Said, co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Michael Barenboim, the orchestra’s longstanding concertmaster, has consistently shown great courage in doing so in the face of implacable opposition from German media and the German state. Indeed, to have given the work’s world premiere in Berlin just under a year ago, in the rare friendly space of the city’s Pierre Boulez Saal, was itself an act of witness. 

An opening cry, far from histrionics, yet all the more powerful for it, spoke of something more fundamental—in more than one sense. Roustom’s piece takes its leave, of course, from Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, and specifically the absurdism of its title, an absurdism we have seen and heard, via Beckett and the debris of post-Holocaust art, inflicted on children in Gaza and beyond. Neither overtly representational nor overtly abstract, its hope in some sense to speak, perhaps to sing, despite and through trauma seemed woven into both piece and performance, as well as to our necessary reactions. That it ultimately approached Ravel and his piece themselves, without the slightest incongruence, itself seemed both absurd and necessary, electronics creating a strange piano echo of their own.   

In a carefully planned programme, this Pavane stood as a counterpart to the first-half Retour á Tipasa for violin and electronics, by Boulez pupil (at the Lucerne Festival Academy) Benjamin Attahir, also following on meaningfully from Layale Chaker’s Before a bloom for solo viola. Both works bridged, like Roustom’s, ‘East’ and ‘West’, not in a banal cross- or inter-culturalism, but as a natural form of expression. The opening éclat – that indispensable Boulezian quality – of Attahir’s work, a dazzling pizzicato figure, was immediately bathed, magnified, and transformed in dialogue with an electronic penumbra that offered more of a sense of aural landscape, though not only that, than Boulez would have been likely to consider. North African melodic and rhythmic inflections – to our ears, they may sound Scottish, but that is our problem – evoke or hail, again without mere representation, the Punic-Roman-Algerian port of Tipasa. Shifting relationships between solo instrument and electronics, as well as a clear, dramatic overall trajectory bore their own witness: not necessarily one to be put into words, but no less important for that. Likewise, in Chaker’s solo piece, whose pizzicato ‘accompaniment’ and solo arco line – it is more complicated than that, but perhaps not entirely – seemed to me strangely, expressively to echo the world of Bartók’s rhapsodies for violin and piano. Originally composed for cello, it showed no obvious sign of transcription, benefiting from rich, variegated viola playing and, again, unfailing sense of overall line. 

Philippe Manoury’s Partita II for violin and electronics came across as effortlessly – however much art conceals art – conceived for violin, electronics, and their joint capabilities: as ‘natural’ as Chopin writing for piano, or Mahler for orchestra. A magical realm of precision, consequence, and highly expressive potential and achievement radiated, Boulez-like, from the ‘solo’ instrument, although it is far from clear that  ‘influence’ or at least inspiration, may not have run as much in the opposite direction.  Both like and unlike a violin concerto, its nine stands’ worth of music was full of surprises that were anything but arbitrary, Barenboim’s virtuosity here as elsewhere so clearly in the service of the music one might readily overlook it—yet should not. 

Opening and closing the programme were Boulez’s own Anthèmes 1 and Anthèmes 2, the former for solo violin, the latter its expansion for violin and electronics. In both, Barenboim – and Boulez – made crystal clear from the outset the nature and contrasts of the musical material: the figure from his …explosante-fixe… ‘kit’, treated in almost sequential yet never predictable variation, and single notes of long duration. It was their story, told in illuminated style that recalled old ‘anthems’ on the acrostic Lamentations of Jeremiah, consecutive Hebrew letters beginning each verse. (Recall also Stravinsky’s Threni.) Performed with a keen, yet never remotely flashy sense of drama, the works’ structure became form before our eyes and ears. Serial-Bachian procedures redolent of the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, especially in Anthèmes 2, evoked the instrument’s past and perhaps its future, proliferation pointing toward an apparent eternity. Musical rays shone outwards from the violin; at other times, the instrument sounded as if a single ray, albeit the brightest, from within a spectrum. This is not spectralist music, far from it, yet the distance may not prove so great as many of us may have thought. I was struck anew by surprisingly Messiaenesque harmony at its centre, by the singular use of electronics in ‘real time’, by the music’s multi-dimensionality. It felt as if the pages of Anthèmes 1 had been opened, their notes, numbers, metaphorical flowers turning to the sun—and then away from it, inspired, emboldened, given new life. There may or may not be hope, but there is still music.

West-Eastern Divan Ensemble/Barenboim M. - Hindemith, Carter, Hensel, and Beethoven, 9 November 2023

Pierre Boulez Saal

Hindemith: Trauermusik for viola and strings
Fanny Hensel: String Quartet in E-flat major
Carter: Au Quai for bassoon and viola; Duettone for violin and cello
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat major, op.20

Michael Barenboim (violin, viola)

Miriam Manaserhov (viola)

Assif Binness (cello)

David Santos Luque (double bass)

Daniel Gurfinkel (clarinet)

Mor Biron (bassoon)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Images: Peter Adamik

9 November is a date full, too full, of resonance for German history. From the proclamation of the Republic in 1918 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it takes in also the Munich putsch of 1923 and the November pogroms of 1938. At the best of times, whenever they might be, it is impossible not to feel conflicted and at times close to overwhelmed by the imperatives of remembrance; and these, I hardly need add, are anything but the best of times. On the 85^th anniversary of what English-speaking countries still refer to as Kristallnacht, although in Germany the term is now generally held to conceal the full horror of what happened that night, even the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble playing Beethoven might have struggled to impart much in the way of hope. Yet somehow, ultimately, these musicians did: not in the sense that they offered a solution to our world’s cruelty, carnage, and apparently irredeemable darkness, whether then or now, of course not. As Daniel Barenboim, co-founder with Edward Said of the orchestra from which this chamber ensemble draws its members, noted in a typically inspiring piece written for the programme, they ‘never intended … [it] to be a political project. It was always a humanistic one, a call against ignorance. It may have seemed like a utopian idea then and perhaps appears even more so today.’

But that they were still here at all, let alone playing, listening and responding was something—and increasingly so. ‘Here, in this building, this utopia,’ Barenboim continued, ‘is alive every day. Our young musicians, whether they come from Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Damascus, or Cairo, work and study under the same roof and learn to listen to each other, in music just as in daily life—something that is impossible in their home countries. It takes courage for them to be here.’ It does indeed, and their courage as well as their broader example offers an example to the audience too, although it is for us, not for them, to lead our struggle to listen rather than merely to hear.

 

A late addition to the programme was Hindemith’s Trauermusik: in Barenboim’s words, ‘our collective expression of grief, but also of hope’. And so it sounded; so it felt. Indeed, the sadness in the first of its four short movements seemed almost unbearable. Was it ‘there’, in the work, or was it what we brought to it? Impossible to answer, and not the most relevant of questions. Michael Barenboim, leading from solo viola, and a string quartet representing Hindemith’s orchestra inhabited the composer’s universe fully, dignity of craft, ensemble, counterpoint, and harmony, and what they might mean to the fore—and beyond that, the universal musical imperative to listen. Hindemith’s use of music from Mathis der Maler reinforced all the more the importance of witness against fascism, against murderous, antihuman ideology. Crisis tends to reinforce what is essential, if only we will take time to find out. Inner movements’ lyricism in particular grew out of that early material, a necessary, human development. The final chorale, ‘Für deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’, offered not triumph, but modest climax in human fragility. It was met with prolonged silence and, eventually, respectful applause. 

Fanny Hensel’s 1834 E-flat major Quartet was an interesting choice, its first movement, ‘Adagio ma non troppo’, opening again with nobility and dignity. Was the sadness with which it seemed to be imbued…? We have already answered that question, or rather observed that answer there can be none. At any rate, the proportion of time spent in the minor mode seemed fitting. Expansive, without dragging, the quartet, again led by Michael Barenboim, seemed very much to have its measure, subtleties telling without exaggeration. The following Allegretto comes closer to Mendelssohn, though it is perhaps both a little more conventional yet also quirkier. Beethoven too came to mind at times (as he often does in Mendelssohn’s own quartets too). There was scope for considerable virtuosity, well taken, within a collegial framework. An eloquent account of the ‘Romanze’, Barenboim first melodist among equals, again permitted reference to other composers, Mendelssohn and Mozart among them, without ever being reducible to them and their ‘influence’. The finale came as close as anything had yet done to good cheer. Sometimes smiling, sometimes sterner, even vehement, it offered plenty of light and shade in a finely directed performance.

 

Either side of the interval came two short works by Elliott Carter. Barenboim’s viola and Mor Biron’s bassoon were very much equals in Au Quai from 2002, Carter a still relatively young 93 at the time of writing. A game of post-Webern ping-pong led to almost Stravinskian melodic flowering, not that the music ever sounded ‘like’ either. Instead, it emerged as something akin to a reinvention, as it were, of a Bach Two-Part Invention, and was despatched as well as composed with a good deal of dry wit. For Duettone, Barenboim was joined by the similarly excellent cellist Assif Binness. It is perhaps too easy to romanticise, but this little gem from Carter’s 101^st year truly sounded like the distillation of a lifetime’s work, not least with respect to his metrical discoveries and explorations. Within its modest frame – though think again of Webern – it seemed to come close to possessing the weight, contrasts, and journey of a symphony. Every combination of notes, and indeed of other parameters, was both fresh and deeply considered. Here, in two solo lines, was something suggesting comparison with one of Bach’s mirror fugues. 

It is difficult to characterise Beethoven’s Septet without resorting to ‘sunny’, and why try? After all, sun affects us in different ways at different times, and necessarily casts a shadow too. The ‘Adagio’ introduction to the first movement was strikingly expansive, rather as if it were taken ‘after’ Barenboim père, and frankly all the better for it. Neither faster nor slower than it ought to be, the movement as whole offered space for a lightness of touch and responsiveness lying at the heart of ethical and musical challenges alike. Line was present throughout in a performance replete with contrasts and sheer delights. The second movement, taken a little slower than is often the case, again benefited from greater space: heavenly length maybe, heavenly without question. Initially led by Daniel Gurfinkel’s quicksilver, liquid clarinet, it afforded all members of the ensemble opportunities to shine, to support, and as ever to listen and respond. Lilt properly verging on swing, conveyed via excellent textural balance born of such listening and response, characterised the minuet and trio. The ensuing theme and variations, in their transformational variety of instrumental combination similarly proposed a lightly worn moral as well as ‘purely’ musical lesson. Buoyant and in the best sense infectious, the scherzo, led by Ben Goldscheider’s miraculous horn playing, was both directed and collegial. Likewise a finale of stature and character which, like the performance as a whole, never forgot the sheer enjoyment to be had from such music, enjoyment that spilled into an encore performance of the Scherzo from Schubert’s Octet.

 

To return to Daniel Barenboim’s words in the programme, ‘We must, want, and will continue to believe that music can bring us closer together as fellow human beings.’ For all who continue to believe, there is no alternative.

Barenboims and Soltani - Beethoven piano trios (2), 2 December 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Concert images: Monika Rittershaus

Variations on ‘Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu’ for piano trio in G major, op.121a

Piano Trio in E-flat major, op.70 no.2

Piano Trio in B-flat major, op.97, ‘Archduke’

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Kian Soltani (cello)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

This, the second instalment of Beethoven piano trios from Michael and Daniel Barenboim and Kian Soltani brought almost as much joy as the first. If compelled to choose between the two, I should have opted for the previous afternoon’s performances. Here, if only by comparison, there were a few minor instances in which violinist and pianist seemed to lack the final ounce of commitment we head heard previously, though such was never the case from the outstanding Soltani on cello. Fortunately, there was no compulsion to choose; instead, I learned much from hearing these works programmed and performed as they were.

The performance of the opening ‘Kakadu’ Variations made as strong a case for this strange work as I have heard, immediately announcing that this was once more to be the truest of chamber music, listening, encouraging, and responding as equals. Daniel Barenboim as pianist may have been the biggest ‘name’, yet he was here very much a colleague. The introduction, so oddly out of kilter with the rest of the work, was spacious, mysterious, expressive without exaggeration of an often surprising degree of chromaticism. The advent of the theme, taken from Wenzel Müller’s opera, Die Schwestern von Prag, made me smile—though that did not seem to be the general audience response. We heard a lovely, characterful parade of variations, all well pointed, and played with all the care and attention that would have been lavished on more ‘serious’ music. I especially loved the syncopated exchange between Michael Barenboim and Soltani in the sixth variation and the insouciant two-part writing, again between violin and cello, in the seventh. Beneath and surrounding that lay Daniel Barenboim’s lifetime’s experience not only in playing and conducting Beethoven, but in thinking and rethinking about this music.

The introduction to the op.70 no.2 Trio spoke with all the depth and mastery of maturity: Beethoven’s, yes, but surely these musicians’ too. What depth there was in particular to the cello tone, Soltani as previously mentioned on very top form throughout. Both here and elsewhere, I greatly appreciated the players relishing rather than in any sense toning down the music’s difficulty. Those possessing performatively jaded palates may complain about the composer’s prominence in concert programming; if they truly listened, we should hear no more silly objections. For here was classicism liquefying before the ears and fingers, the forms Beethoven had inherited both negated and preserved: aufgehoben, to use that indispensable, untranslatable German term. (‘Sublated’ comes closest, I suppose, yet that seems better suited to philosophy than music, insofar as the two may be disentangled.) The Wagnerian melos of the first movement’s development section could hardly be faulted—and why should anyone try? If the second movement opened in strangely casual fashion—perhaps a longer break between movements would have been better?—the rest of the movement emerged in charming, sophisticated, yet never too sophisticated fashion. Soltani’s lute-like pizzicato proved an especial joy. Sterner passages were equally well handled, fine attention paid by all to their specific demands. As ever, there was no hint of one size fitting all. The minuet sang with a sunny integrity typical of Beethoven in this key (A-flat major, rather than the ‘expected’ E-flat). Its C major trio’s strange Romanticism seemed, quite rightly, more than a little suggestive of Mendelssohn. Returning to the tonic, E-flat, for the finale, that return was felt, not merely voiced, in a spirited, ebullient, yet variegated performance. If occasionally I felt, especially earlier on, that it could have been more clearly directed toward its goal, perhaps that was just me. In any case, there was a great deal to absorb and, once again, no attempt to conceal the work’s difficulties.

All good things must come to an end, and what better way to do so than with the ‘Archduke’ Trio? The opening of the first movement can readily sound too emphatic. Not here, Daniel Barenboim’s relaxed wisdom just the thing as gateway to the work as a whole. There was, I think, greater tempo variation here than previously, yet never for its own sake and always rewardingly so. A particular type of middle-period Beethoven melodic writing and its implications were captured to a tee in the development, Soltani once more noteworthy in his combination of the moving and commanding. Sheer ‘naturalness’ of return to the tonic was something to be relished; so too, was ongoing further development to the close. Throughout, detail and a sense of whole were held in fine, productive balance. The scherzo sang and danced delightfully; its trio’s counterpoint proved darkly even disconcertingly mysterious, piano outbursts hinting intriguingly at Chopin. The slow movement’s ‘second simplicity’ emerged in a reading of rapt sublimity. I could have done without snoring from the row behind; such, I suppose, is part of life’s rich tapestry. What a world, in any case, we had travelled from the variations with which the concert had begun. Exalted good humour characterised the finale, both light and profound as required, often in simultaneity.

Barenboims and Soltani - Beethoven piano trios (1), 1 December 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Piano Trio in E-flat major, op.1 no.1

Piano Trio in C minor, op.1 no.3

Piano Trio in G major, op.1 no.2

Piano Trio in D major, op.70 no.1, ‘Ghost’

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Kian Soltani (cello)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal has already seen—and heard—a few portents of next year’s Beethoven anniversary. In September, the first concert of the 2019-20 season opened with Beethoven’s Horn Sonata, op.17. With Advent Sunday, the festivities began in earnest: the first of two concerts in which the six piano trios (plus the ‘Kakadu’ Variations) are performed by Michael Barenboim, Kian Soltani, and Daniel Barenboim. If subsequent events turn out to compare well with this, we shall be in for a special year indeed. Where better to start, to bring light to the long nights of a Berlin winter, than with Beethoven’s official opus 1? Before that, however, Daniel Barenboim requested—and naturally received—a minute’s silence for Mariss Jansons, whose death had been announced but a few hours earlier: ‘ein ganz grosser Musiker und ein wunderbarer Mensch’. Quite—and very much in keeping with the humanism to be celebrated throughout the coming year.

The E-flat Trio, first of the three Beethoven composed for Prince Karl Lichnowsky, opened in bright, alert, reflectively post-Mozartian fashion: very much an opening not just to the first movement, not just to the work, not just to the set and concert, but to the œuvre and year ahead. It was clear from the very outset that this was to be chamber-music playing of the greatest distinction; much could be garnered even just from watching the players listen, their give-and-take. Likewise from the difference heard in the first-movement exposition ‘repeat’: nothing of the sort, of course, yet nor was it different for the sake of it. Much the same might be said for the return to the tonic in the recapitulation and its necessary novelty to remain and conclude in that key: touchingly so, indeed. Harmony, as in all Beethoven performances worthy of the name, underlay events ‘above’; there was no need to draw attention to the fact, for it simply—or not so simply—‘was’. The greatest Western music from the years leading up to 1800—think, for instance, of Haydn’s London Symphonies and The Creation—conveys a sense of a Newtonian musical universe there to be mapped, explored, wondered at; so did this performance.

Beethoven’s early slow movements are no easy thing to bring off. It should doubtless come as little surprise that a performance led, if only as first among equals, by Daniel Barenboim should succeed in that, fulfilling the ‘Adagio cantabile’s stylistic and formal demands to perfection, but it is still worth acclaiming. Time and space, simplicity and ornament: all sounded and felt as they ‘should’. And how those modulations were handled! Different characters of each instrument, each instrumentalist registered—Michael Barenboim’s wordless song and Kian Soltani’s suave profundity as much as Barenboim père’s incontrovertible identification with the music ‘itself’—yet equally came together as voices of a single humanity. A buoyant scherzo brought fine balance between detail and formal dynamism, permitting motivic development freely to speak, to lead. Its trio followed, voiced with intimacy on a coiled (harmonic) spring, the trio’s reprise rightly coming—however much one ‘knew’—as a surprise. Daniel Barenboim clearly knew and communicated what was at stake in the finale’s opening slurred leaps of a tenth; the fuse was gently, confidently lit. Full of delightful and, later, truly moving surprises, later imitated and developed by Michael Barenboim, the twists and turns of this movement managed to recall, intensify, and sublimate so much of what we had heard previously, while remaining true to the particular form and function of this, the closing movement. Wonderful!

The third of the Lichnowsky trios followed, its C minor home tonality already revealed to be moving away from Mozart—yet with undoubted reference, for instance to the Piano Sonata, KV 457, and with Mozartian melodic writing as a counterweight—toward something else, something more Beethovenian, for want of a better word. How much greater emotional weight there was to be heard on the reprise of the introduction, not least in Michael Barenboim’s rich-toned violin phrase; likewise the reprise, insofar as we may call it that, of the exposition as a whole. For it sounded rather as if already a first development, preparing the way for second and, in the recapitulation, third developments to come. The latter sounded fuller of surprises than ever—‘simply’ by playing the notes and everything between and surrounding them. Tragic vehemence in the coda, Neapolitan harmony and all, proved similarly Janus-faced. Truths were spoken, or rather sung, with perfect balance between the aristocratic and popular in the second movement variations. Such a balance, one felt, was still just about possible; Haydn was after all still very much alive, even if Mozart were not, at least in a merely corporeal sense. The third variation’s concerto-like piano, set against pizzicato, beautifully judged violin and cello, had one on the edge of one’s seat—in a good way. Soltani’s tragic, seria voice in its successor proved ineffably effecting. Everything, one felt, was there, was here. The complex neoclassicism—yes, already—of the minuet was apparent: meaningful, yet never laboured. Space—just enough, nothing excessive—was afforded for its trio to relax and to develop. Then the C minor tragic daemon could truly be unleashed for Beethoven’s finale, quite without detriment to lovable glances sideways and indeed backwards to a vanishing eighteenth century. The ‘Pathétique’ Sonata was just around the corner, yet rightly not quite with us either. That this was Beethoven, however, no one could have any doubt.

Following the interval, we heard op.1 no.2, the closest of the three to Haydn—and so it sounded, not least in the first movement introduction, whose transition to the exposition proper was revealingly likened by Denis Matthews to that of the ‘Oxford’ Symphony. We were invited to listen, both to the work’s particularity and to its kinship, harmonic and motivic development coming together to delineate a path both familiar and unique. In the slow movement, a wordless vocal ensemble vouchsafed us truths that words could never tell. Hopeless Romanticism? Perhaps, yet if so, so what? Daniel Barenboim’s piano told of something so ineffably sublime that already the way seemed pointed towards the composer’s late works. The scherzo’s keen sense of Affekt and of line prepared the way for a trio that justly rejuvenated rather than relaxed. In Beethoven, no one size fits all. Haydn to the n^th degree characterised the finale’s moto perpetuo, the simplest musical—tonal-musical—building blocks, scales, diatonic triads, and so on, imbued with the freshness of discovery.

For the final work on the programme, we moved to middle-period Beethoven, to the so-called ‘Ghost’ Trio, op.70 no.1. Striking in context was the similarity of means in its first movement to the finale of the preceding work. Full maturity of voice, however, proved just as striking in contrast, rendering performance as much as reception a very different experience. It was not just that one heard greater ‘Romanticism’, though one did, but the combination of broader canvas and—shockingly—greater concision, of contrapuntal and motivic intensity and, at times, density of texture: on the page, yes, but flying off it too. As Beethoven took his leave from Haydn and Mozart, he drew still closer to them. The slow movement voiced, perhaps for the first time, a tragic sadness with roots in Mozart, yet which cast its shadow long into the nineteenth century and even at times beyond. Soltani and the Barenboims shaped its course so unerringly that one never noticed the shaping, the skill and understanding behind, the material necessity. And what extraordinary material this is: that one felt as if for the first time, its strangeness confirmed and renewed. The finale brought an aptly direct and elliptical response, its goal before us, yet nevertheless held in suspense. If sometimes the music sounded close to Brahms in texture and harmony, that is only because it is indeed. Yet there was none of Brahms’s ‘lateness’, all the immediacy of middle-period Beethoven: as vigorous as it was euphonious, as impetuous as it was sublime.

Salzburg Festival (2) – Argerich/Barenboim/Members of the WEDO - Prokofiev and Schumann, 15 August 2019

Haus für Mozart

Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes, op.34

Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op.44

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor, op.105

Schumann: Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10

Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim (pianos)

Michael Barenboim, Mohammed Hiber (violins)

Miriam Manasherov (viola)

Astrig Siranossian, Adi Tal (cellos)

Jussef Eisa (clarinet)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Schumann chamber music, with a Prokofiev overture: in this case a chamber overture, that ‘on Hebrew themes’, op.34. Martha Argerich and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra treated us to a faithful, captivating performance, through the piece’s various twists and turns. Clarinettist, Jussef Eisa offered a sinuous Klezmer solo, set nicely against rhythmically insistent playing from the rest of the small band, all of whose solo passages made their mark keenly when required. It is a work I have long held dear, having played the piano part a few times for a sixth-form ensemble. Had I heard Argerich then, I may well have given up in despair – which may or may not have been a good thing.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet likewise brought out the best in its players, the first movement opening forthright, yet soon melting as it should in Argerich’s hands. It would be more or less impossible for her presence not to be first among equals here, but this was true chamber music playing from all concerned, with no sense of being overwhelmed. A cello and viola duet could be just as wonderfully ‘accompanied’ by her – and was. A proper sense of structure becoming dynamic form was felt, the exposition ‘repeat’ no mere repeat, the development duly exploratory. There was sadness, too, in the recapitulation, Schubert’s example perhaps especially apparent both there and in a searching, enigmatic account of the second movement. There were visions of other worlds, yes, but it was not necessarily vouchsafed to us what they were. Argerich on piano proved the securest of foundations for a propulsive scherzo, exultant, whilst nonetheless bearing memorial traces of what had preceded it. Instrumental poetry, ever the key to Schumann, characterised in different ways the two trios. The finale’s character can be difficult to judge, or at least to convey: not so here, its corners navigated with skill and conviction, motivic working and poetic mood as one. Brahms may at times have been but a stone’s throw away, but this remained unmistakeably Schumann. Affinity is not, after all, identity.

Having served ably as first violin in both of these works, Michael Barenboim took the stage with Argerich after the interval for the first of Schumann’s violin sonatas. They proved well matched, not unlike the first movement’s Romantic turbulence and Innigkeit. Barenboim’s tone was beautifully centred, with well-judged vibrato and occasional portamento; Argerich was, well, Martha Argerich, the nagging motivic insistence of her part never too much, though how it mattered. The central Allegretto benefited from rapt yet never precious lyricism and an elfin fantasy that again foretold the world of Brahms. Quicksilver changes of mood in the finale, never quite to be likened to one another, were effected by both musicians with ineffable musicality. Instrumental balance was, quite simply, never an issue. (If only I might say the same for student performances I should rather forget…)

The 1843 Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10, is an engaging rarity. In performances that seemed already to look forward to a welcome brace of encores, Argerich and Barenboim senior imparted different yet kindred ‘voices’ to their instruments, without one necessarily being able to say how, let alone why. Much the same might be said of cellists, Astrig Siranossian and Adi Tal. Together with horn player, Ben Goldscheider, the unusual ensemble offered mercurial yet responsive performances; the players drew us in, led us on paths both familiar and surprising. A quotation from Frauenliebe und –leben – aptly, perhaps, for the two female cellists – drew me up sharp. What are we to make of it? Whatever we wish, I suppose. It must surely have made Clara Schumann smile when the work was first played, likewise her piano partner, Felix Mendelssohn.

Prom 43: Batiashvili/Dreisig/WEDO/Barenboim - Tchaikovsky, Coleman, and Scriabin, 14 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

 
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin, op.24: Polonaise
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, op.35
David Robert Coleman: Looking for Palestine (2017-18)
Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy, op.54

Elsa Dreisig (soprano)

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Can music lie? Conversely, can it tell the truth? Are those meaningless questions, confusions of category? Most of us, I think, would agree that music can mislead and that it can also lay claim to truth content. It was certainly a relief to spend a couple of hours away from the lies that infest our political and ‘media’ life, to experience the truthfulness of great musicianship.

 

A late addition to the printed programme was the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin. It made for just as splendid an overture as it might have done an encore. Daniel Barenboim has a splendid history with this opera and with Tchaikovsky more generally. With his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra too I heard perhaps the best live performance I have yet to experience of the Sixth Symphony. Moreover, the first time I heard the orchestra live, at the LRB’s Edward Said Memorial Concert in 2004, the Fifth was on the programme. Here heard – almost saw – the swagger of St Petersburg: for once with an unashamedly large, generous orchestra. There was seductive intimacy too: those stolen glances, aural and almost visual, telling us much. And those cellos…

 

The Violin Concerto took off, so it seemed, from where the Polonaise had left us: stylistically, even developmentally, there was much in common, yet also of course much to distinguish. Barenboim provided an almost Beethovenian sense of purpose to take us up to Lisa Batiashvili’s entry. Her tone struck me throughout as akin to a fine red Burgundy: rich yet never too full-bodied, cultivated, always hitting the spot – and the dead centre of the notes, single – or double-stopped, without so much as a hint of the clinical. Rubato was perfectly judged as a tool of expression, as were Barenboim’s variations of tempo. The cadenza might have been written, as well as performed, ‘in real time’, such was the sense, however illusory, of spontaneity. Freshness of woodwind solos was just as striking, each and every one of them revealing a star in the best, collegiate sense. Likewise in the Canzonetta, in which Batiashvili’s duetting with them proved the magical highlight of highlights, and the finale. Even in a performance such as this, I cannot say that Tchaikovsky’s invention, or lack thereof, quite convinces. There is surely a good deal of note-spinning. It came closer than I can recall, though, and this was exquisite spinning of notes, with all the character of a great finale.

 

David Robert Coleman’s Looking for Palestine sets passages from Najla Said’s – that is Edward’s daughter’s – one-woman play Palestine. First she bears witness to the vicious Israeli onslaught upon Lebanon in 2006 – vigorously supported, you may remember, by Tony Blair and New Labour. ‘You can spend your life being a humanist, a pacifist … treating them the same way you wish to be treated BUT when you are being attacked, when bombs are falling … your life is in danger and you are scared, it is so easy to look up at the sky and scream at the top of your lungs’. Later, in New York City, she discovers a group protesting for Palestinian rights – her rights – without being able to contribute: ‘ME, I am this Palestinian walking by them all with my mouth slightly open, because I want to do, say, give, something, SOMETHING, and I’m thinking how I can’t, and shouldn’t at that what WOULD I do, say? And I’m thinking that words are so powerful, Palestine … Palestine … that word … that word … that word …’

 

Words are indeed powerful, as is music; so too is their combination. Here, the oud sets up the musical setting – and, in a sense, the words to come too. Its intervals, in the solo introduction, seem generative, leading to more non-verbal speech – or is it? is that to render things too easy, to sentimentalise? – from the fine WEDO brass section. As well as the oud, piano, harps, percussion seem to incite the rest of the orchestra – perhaps to look for Palestine too. The soprano’s introduction in turn – ‘And though I have never returned to Palestine, Palestine always returns to me. Tuesday, July eleventh, I am in Beirut.’ – incites both action and remembrance. (Remembrance, we may reflect, is sometimes all we have, for better or worse.) Coleman’s setting here, Elsa Dreisig complemented, perhaps even questioned by, electronics, came closer to Nono than anything I had yet heard Barenboim conduct. It would be quite a thing were he to take up those particular cudgels now from his erstwhile friend and colleague, Claudio Abbado. Like Nono, Coleman, in the three short ‘scenes’ that follow, evinces a keen sense of that ineffable thing we call ‘vocal style’. It may or may not correspond to anything we have heard before; yet, even if we cannot explain it, we know it – at least in a fine performance, which this certainly seemed to be. There was, perhaps, also a sense of post-Bergian writing for voice and orchestra – certainly harmony – as the first scene went on. Amplified speech at the opening of the second came across as reimagined recitative. Was there a bit of the easy film score towards its close? Perhaps, but one might well argue that the words suggest such an approach.

 

An amplified ‘stage whisper’, in the introduction to the third scene – ‘I think’ – called into question even the identity Said/Dreisig had established for herself, post 9/11, as an ‘Arab bridging the gap between two worlds that don’t understand each other’. Ligetian scurrying and swarming, a whip that – if only to me – evoked Alberich in Nibelheim, traffic whistles: all this and more went to suggest the aural urban landscape of Manhattan, even what Nono would have called his ‘provocation’. Was the final, vaguely ‘Arabic’ vocal line a sign or an indictment of Orientalism? That such a question, clearly presented, was left hanging was perhaps the most telling aspect of all.

 

Finally, at least on the programme, came Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. Barenboim and his orchestra proved once again very much in their element. Work and performance opened somewhere between Wagner and Debussy, and immediately headed somewhere beyond them – whatever one thinks of that particular ‘beyond’. Yes, I thought, he ‘gets’ Scriabin. An urgent, undeniably hot-house performance, founded on rhythmic progression and above all on the progression of harmonic rhythm, seemed in just the right sense to ‘go with the flow’, or better, to ride the crest of these strange, even gaudy aural waves. Until languor set in, that is, and how, Michael Barenboim’s sweet toned violin solos very much the icing on that particular cake. Overloading with metaphors seems inevitable here, even in stylistic keeping. Immediacy of colour, initial Tannhäuser-like frustration of climax, trumpets and brass more general with old-fashioned ‘Russian’ vibrato, all led us up to a series of final climaxes which may or may not be ludicrous – but which are surely what Scriabin ‘meant’.

 

After that, the unforced nobility of a generous ‘Nimrod’ spoke more clearly and, yes, more truthfully than any words could. Now it was over to us, but would Elgar’s countrymen listen?

Barenboims and Soltani - Beethoven and Borowski, 19 November 2017

Pierre Boulez Saal

Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-flat major, op.1 no.1

Johannes Boris Borowski: Piano Trio (2013)

Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, op.70 no.1

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Kian Soltani (cello)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

Recently seventy-five years young, Daniel Barenboim is returning his attention to Beethoven’s chamber music – as well as turning and returning his attention to much else. The music of Johannes Boris Borowski is one of those newer focuses of attention. Borowski’s Encore was first performed earlier this year at the Pierre Boulez Saal by Barenboim and the hall’s resident Boulez Ensemble. Now, with two fine young musicians, violinist Michael Barenboim and cellist Kian Soltani, the elder Barenboim presented two of Beethoven’s piano trios – the rest are to come – alongside Borowski’s 2013 work, written originally for the Trio Steuermann.

This was, I think, my first encounter with Borowski’s music. It certainly made me keen to hear more, and indeed to hear the Piano Trio again. Typical caveats for a new work (to me) apply: I have not seen a score, and am basing my account entirely upon a single hearing (and performance). Written in a single movement, lasting about a quarter of an hour, Borowski’s Trio emerged as somewhat in the Schubert-Liszt-Schoenberg tradition of encompassing at least a sense, if less overtly than those composers, of traditional movements within. It certainly sounded as a work in itself, not one movement in need of anything else. My ear – the Boulez Saal’s ‘thinking ear’, I hope – was especially caught later on by a haunting passage, seemingly ‘led’ by the cello, often with harmonics, which paved the way for what sounded akin to a ‘slow movement’ section, save for its placing at the close. ‘Placing’ is not quite the right word, given the possible implication of contrivance, for it proved very much a fitting conclusion and, in its way, a ‘return’, with all the musical connotations that might bring.

For there was there to be heard a return, albeit transformed, to the material of the very opening, whose intervals had announced themselves – I think – of fundamental importance to the progression of the work as a whole: not unlike Webern, perhaps, for they proved generative in a thematic, even melodic sense, even on this first hearing. The sound-world was not Webern’s; why would it be? It was darker, perhaps, at any rate recognisably, if you will forgive the aesthetic affront, post-high-modernist (by which I certainly do not mean postmodernist). All three instrumentalists listened and responded to each other as their parts suggested or demanded; this was played above all as ‘chamber music’, rather than ‘new music’. Echoes, transformations, and repetitions of figures between instruments could thus be experienced much – well, at least in part – as one might have done with Beethoven or Haydn. The considerable technical demands for violin and cello in particular were fearlessly and, above all, musically navigated. As I said, I look forward to hearing the piece again – and more by Borowski.

Prior to that, we had heard the first of Beethoven’s works in the genre, indeed his op.1 no.1: the Trio in E-flat major. The very first bar spoke of a young composer, his music full of what can only, if bathetically, be described as ‘life’. Barely ‘Romantic’ at all – surely rather less so than late Mozart or late Haydn – this was nevertheless unmistakeably Beethoven, ‘influences’ notwithstanding. The performance, both of the first movement and beyond, was ‘stylish, yes, but as an integral part of work and performance: not, as so many ‘authenticke’ brethren would seem to think, as something to be applied to the notes. Balance, which so many of them would claim, quite without evidence, to be ‘impossible’ on modern instruments, never proved an issue at all. The expansive, even on occasion slightly stiff, qualities of Beethoven’s early structures were minimised, form properly dynamic, developmental modulations in particular relished.

The three instruments (and their players) were especially winningly differentiated in the slow movement, taken at a tempo that seemed just right to accommodate, or better navigate, its competing demands. Daniel Barenboim proved fully equal to the apparently opposed demands of simplicity and complexity, so typical of an early Beethoven slow movement. Michael Barenboim was not afraid to sound a little rougher, where the music suggested such an approach. The surpassing elegance of Soltani’s cello tone was yet never an end in itself. A sprightly, good humoured, even skittish scherzo followed, the trio more relaxed, and considerably more intimate. One was compelled to listen: all the better. The invention implied and unleashed by that almost bizarre opening phrase of the finale – bizarre, until one appreciates, if only retrospectively, what it is suggesting – quite rightly never found itself normalised. If there were a few oddities of balance in this movement, there was nothing too grievous, far more simply, or not so simply, to enjoy.

The so-called ‘Ghost’ Trio, op.70 no.1 – to my mind, a singularly unhelpful nickname – was heard in the second half. This was unquestionably, and with just cause, a very different Beethoven: master of all he surveyed, master of more than we mere mortals could ever survey, and yet more profoundly human than all of us too. There were points of reference to the early work we had heard, but the musical sublimity – an idea essentially defined by Beethoven’s music – was something quite different. Not that this was an unduly reverential performance, nor indeed a reverential performance at all. The composer’s intense developmental concision characterised what therefore proved – again, nothing applied to the music – a thrilling first movement.

There was no doubting the Romanticism, however defined or understood, of the slow movement. It rarity, in every sense, sang as unmistakeably as anything in the composer’s late œuvre. Rapt, sublime – yes, I know I am repeating myself – this offered the (dialectical?) contradiction of a ‘perfect dialectic’, between the simple and the complex. Whatever one fancied to have become impossible after Mozart’s death, for a few minutes sounded not only once again possible but close to realisation. Arioso or scena? Ultimately, rightly, this movement was simply itself. First and foremost, the performance of the finale possessed the character of a finale. It offered release after the slow movement, yet tension aplenty of its own too. Nevertheless, something of the spirit of the father, indeed the inventor, of the piano trio remained: Haydn lived. What invention here, then, both in work and in performance!

‘Music for the thinking ear’: the opening concert of the Pierre Boulez Saal, 5 March 2017

© Volker Kreidler

 

Boulez – Initiale

Schubert – Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D 965
Mozart – Piano Quartet in E-flat major, KV 493
Berg – Chamber Concerto
Widmann – Fantasie, for solo clarinet
Boulez – sur Incises

Anna Prohaska (soprano)

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Yulia Deyneka (viola)

Kian Soltani (cello)

Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

Karim Said (piano)

Boulez Ensemble

Daniel Barenboim (piano, conductor)

‘Musik für das denkende Ohr’ is the slogan for Berlin’s new Pierre Boulez Saal, which opened its doors to the public on Saturday 4 March. Why a new hall? The city’s Philharmonie (‘Karajan’s Circus’, or ‘Zirkus Karajani’, as West Berliners dubbed it) remains a monument to architectural, acoustic, and indeed performative modernism. There are no bad seats, whether visually or acoustically; the surrounding of the orchestra, or other performers, by the audience offers quite a different, ‘in the round’ experience from many more ‘traditional’ halls, even the most blessed acoustically, such as Vienna’s Musikverein and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, let alone the miserable examples with which London has been cursed.  Nevertheless, although Hans Scharoun’s Berlin hall has a smaller, chamber music hall attached, Berlin has had nothing like this. Frank Gehry’s oval design – no stage, merely a centre, again ‘in the round’ – genuinely seems to open up, in the spirit of Boulez’s long-held desire for a flexible ‘salle modulable’, the possibility of the ‘thinking ear’: to engage, to reflect, to make itself part of the performance. The greatest distance there can be between the conductor and the most distant member of the audience (682 seats in total) is but fourteen metres. There is intimacy, then, but the intimacy, it is hoped of collaborative endeavour.

The conceptual collaboration between Gehry, Daniel Barenboim, and acoustician, Yasuhisa Toyota stands very much in the spirit of the artistic collaboration, spanning more than half a century, between Barenboim and Boulez. They performed together for the first time in Berlin, with the Philharmonic, in Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto, and Barenboim has long proved one of the most ardent champions of his friend’s music. Whilst Boulez’s death continues to be lamented, the conscience of New Music seems almost to be reborn here. In programming philosophy, we see echt-Boulezian selections, connections made. Barenboim’s new ‘Boulez Ensemble’, at least as modulable as the hall, made up of musicians from his Staatskapelle Berlin and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, both of which Boulez conducted, will present concerts with combinations of contemporary music, Classical music, and classically modernist music – just as Boulez would insist that musicians auditioning for his Ensemble Intercontemporain play one Classical piece, not just contemporary music. The hall will also, most important of all, offer a home to the young musician-students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, whose first cohort, thirty-seven of them, enrolled last autumn.

 

© Volker Kreidler

There will be much more to say about the hall itself; much will already have been said by others. I should like to concentrate now on the opening concert itself. It was given twice, the Saturday evening concert in the presence of a host of dignitaries, the German President included; I went the following morning. It may have been a lengthy occasion by the standards of the typical, one might say formulaic, concert; it did not feel as if it were. There is no reason why every concert should last for about two hours with an interval; every opera does not. If a performance of, say, the Diabelli Variations or the Missa solemnis is enough in itself, then there is no reason to add to it. Nor is there any reason to fret about a concert as rich, in very Boulezian terms, in programming possibility as this. Split into three parts, with two intervals, repertoire stretching from Mozart to Jörg Widmann, this encouraged, even did its part to create, that very ‘thinking ear’ of which we had previously been informed: to think and to listen.  

A new hall needs a fanfare. This one had Boulez’s 1987 Initiale, for seven brass instruments (two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, and tuba). The musicians encircled us, or rather played to us, Gabrieli-like, from the balcony, conducted (although I could not see him from where I was seated) by Barenboim. Clarity and warmth combined in near-ideal proportions, both in work and in performance. The experience of Répons seemed to offer musical as well as spatial inspiration – albeit now somewhat miniaturised. Five minutes of music offered an extraordinary expressive range, almost as if a symphonic poem and its narrative, wordless or otherwise, were being distilled – which, in a sense, is just what was happening.  It is not for nothing that ‘form’, understood as something more dynamic than ‘structure’, is contained within the word ‘performance’.

Schubert is to feature strongly in the Boulez Saal’s programming. A Winterreise with Christian Gerhaher, Barenboim at the piano, will launch a cycle of the complete Lieder over several years; Barenboim will also play the complete piano sonatas and conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in the complete the symphonies. Here, we heard Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, with Anna Prohaska and Jörg Widmann, neatly also offering connections both to Widmann’s own clarinet Fantasie in the third section of the concert and to subsequent Widmann contributions to the season. This was true chamber music, perhaps especially between the two ‘soloists’, Barenboim not exactly reticent but far from dominant. The song opens: ‘When I stand on the highest rock, look down into the deep valley, and sing,’ that final ‘und singe’, quietly ecstatic here, enthusiastically echoed, as if across the valley, by the clarinet. The clarity of both lines – this was certainly not just a matter of the acoustic – did much to aid the Alpine impression: ‘atmosphere’, as Boulez would have been the first to point out, does not necessarily entail a blur. There was real sadness to be heard in the fourth and fifth stanzas, ‘In tiefem Gram verhehr ich mich…,’ until the ‘wunderbarer Macht’ (wondrous power) of song itself won through: a triumph as unmistakeable as it was unexaggerated. Playing to the gallery, figuratively or literally, is not a requirement for the hall of the thinking ear. And what post-Mozartian delight there was to be had in the concluding stanza, Spring arrived, receiving a fitting celebration in Prohaska’s coloratura.

Barenboim has been associated with the music of Mozart for as long as he has been a performing musician. For many of us, his piano concertos (whether with the English Chamber Orchestra or the Berlin Philharmonic) can hardly be bettered. It was fitting, then, to round off this first part of the concert with Mozart’s E-flat major Piano Quartet, with Michael Barenboim (violin), Yulia Deyneka (viola), and Kian Soltani (cello). I am yet to be entirely convinced by Barenboim senior’s new piano, much as I applaud the initiative; this was not the occasion on which I was to be won over. At times, although I do not wish to exaggerate, his uncontested leading role passed over into heavy-handedness. Nevertheless, at its best the first movement offered a fine balance between ebullience and tenderness, muscularity excluding neither relaxation nor, most importantly, dialogue. A typical Barenboim strength was to be heard in the dynamism of form I remarked upon in Initiale; Mozart’s music developed, motivically and harmonically, the one engendering the other. The balance between simplicity and complexity was well achieved in the slow movement, harmonic surprised registering with a delight that comes of knowing them well. The quiet dignity of the score, supported by extraordinary musical richness as soon as one exercised that ‘thinking ear’, was affirmed. Perhaps the finale was taken a little hastily: more Allegro than Allegretto? Such matters are, however, tricky in Mozart. It had, at any rate, the character of a finale, even if Barenboim sometimes proved a little too dominant again. The extroversion of the close was nothing less than delightful.

 

© Peter Adamik

The second section was given over to Berg’s Chamber Concerto. Barenboim conducted, his son played the violin solo, with Karim Said as solo pianist. (It was difficult not to think of this as a reinvention of the classic recording with Boulez, Barenboim, and Pinchas Zukerman.) Even with the intervention of an interval, one could hardly resist, even if one wished to do so, hearing Berg with Mozartian ears: protean, teeming with invention and expression. Boulez’s late recording with Mitusko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff, cunningly, revealingly coupled with Mozart’s own Gran Partita, KV 361, came to mind. Thirteen instruments: how very un-Schoenbergian! The two soloists only combine in the final movement, the first being the pianist’s territory. Said offered clarity and sweep – just as Boulez, or Berg, might have wanted, or so one could fancy. Conductor, ensemble, and hall seemed to combine to afford a relationship between such clarity and complexity that came to the very heart of the work and its ever-shifting balances. Barenboim had its measure as few conductors, Boulez excepted, can ever have done, more than once playing up, or so it seemed, anticipations of Lulu.  

Musical process was audibly at work throughout, just as much in the central Adagio as in that opening theme and variations. Michael Barenboim’s playing gave us tenderness and fury, sometimes well-nigh spontaneous. Still more so did that of the Boulez Ensemble, its climaxes fearsome, de profundis. Berg’s music emerged as it should: labyrinthine yet purposeful. The thread was never lost, not even for a split second. Furious, again, and still more febrile, the finale, piano and violin now combined, proved endless generative in its working through of musical material. Constructivism was shown to be in itself expressive, not somehow, sentimentally, opposed to expression. (Again, Boulez would surely have approved.) The re-entry of the orchestral ensemble seemed truly to set in motion the idea of a finale, endlessly developmental and yet unquestionable in its conclusion.

Widmann returned to give a spell-binding account of his early (1993) Fantasie for solo clarinet. Like the brass players for Initiale, he played down to us from the balcony, in a performance that incited, might even be thought of as incantatory.  Musical line was as clear, as direct, as anything we had heard before, extended techniques very much at its service rather than heard for the first time. The performance seemed almost to exemplify the wishes expressed both by Boulez and by Barenboim that new music (newish, in this case) be performed as if it were classical (and vice versa).

Meanwhile, three pianos, three sets of percussion instruments, and three harps awaited their respective performers (Karim Said, Denis Koshukhin, Michael Wendeberg; Lev Loftus, Pedro Torrejón González, Dominic Oelze; Aline Khouri, Susanne Kabaln, Stephen Fitzpatrick) for Boulez’s sur Incises. Like many of Boulez’s works, sur Incises has its seeds in an earlier work. Incises is a piano piece written (1994, revised 2001) for the Umberto Micheli Piano Competition (with which Maurizio Pollini, long an advocate of Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata, had a strong association). Boulez’s initial intention, as he explained in an interview of 1998, was to:

 

… transform this piece into a longer one for Pollini and a group of instrumentalists, a kind of piano concerto although without reference to the traditional form. … Therefore, I produced a piece for three pianos, assuming that there already exists enough interesting literature for two pianos and ensembles, especially in the modern age – take for example Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. (In my opinion, everybody would have been reminded of this world if I had also written a piece for two pianos.) I have also considered the possibility of four pianos as this constellation is very attractive and provides a good balance.

 

Then, however, the siren call of Stravinsky and especially Les Noces suggested another path. As Boulez would remark more recently, in 2010, ‘This is the reason why I ended up with three pianos - incidentally three pianists are part of our ensemble [Intercontemporain].’ There were likewise three percussionists in the ensemble, and subsequently, the idea of adding three harps occurred to him, an idea rendered more attractive by his use of the instrument in Répons.

Boulez’s conception of serialism as ever-expanding, open-ended, was the overriding experience of this performance, conducted by Barenboim. The spatial element sounded more crucial than ever: we hear solo lines but also different groups: three groups, considered vertically, each of percussion, harp, and piano, and, considered horizontally, the three percussionists, the three harpists, and the three pianists. A startling aspect of those latter formations, all the more so in this telling acoustic, was to hear passages transferring spatially across, say, the three pianos, whilst remaining in a sense part of the one giant piano: played, as it were, by Barenboim, the pianist-conductor. I have long thought here of Boulez playing with something akin to a musical magical square, three rows and columns constantly shifting, and yet always adding up to the required total, even if we do not know what that should be: a magical extension of Webern, one might say.

Then there were the beguiling sonorities: the sumptuous quality of Boulez’s harmonies, fully captured here, harks back to and yet surely extends those of Debuusy. Kinetic, rhythmic energy brought every more strongly to mind Stravinsky and Bartók; indeed, that distancing from the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion notwithstanding, Bartók’s ghost seemed present in some of the piano writing, contagious, as it were, for the other instrumentalists. Barenboim seemed especially adept at signalling moments of transformation; one might think of Boulez’s own conception, adumbrated in his lectures to the Collège de France, of the musical ‘signal’. Rising clamour, typically Boulezian frenzy, would subside, at least partially, dialectically: confounding, yet making unanswerable sense. Form, we were again reminded, lives, acquires meaning, in performance, especially one so outstanding in quality as this. (What collaborative virtuosity was on show, and yet never for its own sake!) Nevertheless, however much we might have wished this universe to continue expanding forever, its material in perpetual proliferation, the conclusion once again proved decisive – at least until the next time. The ear had thought; the mind had listened.

(An edited version of this article appeared first in VAN Magazine, focusing less on the performances, more on the idea and reality of the hall and its programming. Please click here to read that. Apologies for the inconsistencies of formatting in this case: I seemed unable to get it to work, however much I tried...)