Berlin Festtage (3) - Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim, et al., Boulez, 29 March 2015

Philharmonie

Le Visage nuptial

Anthèmes 2
Notations I, III, IV, VII, II (piano and orchestral versions)

Mojca Erdmann (soprano)

Anna Lapkovskaja (mezzo-soprano)

Ladies of the MDR Choir and NDR Choir (chorus masters: James Wood and Bernhard Epstein)

Michael Barenboim (violin)

Carlo Laurenzi and Jérémie Henriot (sound and live electronics, developed and realised at IRCAM)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (piano, conductor)

Boulez’s Le Visage nuptial remains a rare feast in every sense. It can certainly rarely have received a more ravishing performance, even when conducted by the composer. Mojca Edrmann, Anna Lapkovskaja, and the ladies of the MDR and NDR choruses, under Daniel Barenboim gave a first-class account, which must surely have won new converts both to work and composer. There can be few more inviting examples of Boulez’s Klee-inspired heterophony, geometrical (yet fantastical) surrounding of an ‘orginal’ line with others, even this relatively early work, revisions notwithstanding, paving the way for later masterpieces such as sur Incises. Perhaps the opening of the first movement, ‘Conduite’, acts as a primer in miniature for such method; so, at least, did it seem here, following the opening orchestral éclat, and the entry of ecstatic female solo voices, Erdmann very much the daring high soprano, Lapkovskaia’s rich mezzo often suggestive of a true(r) contralto. Shimmering strings after René Char’s words, ‘O ma Fourche, ma Soif anxieuse’ inevitably suggested the (post-)coital. Not the least aspect of this work is Boulez’s remarkably insightful exploration of female sexuality. Brief flowering of Messiaenesque rhythm in the final stanza both nodded to and expressed distance from Boulez’s teacher. Post-Debussyan languor was the order of the day in the beautifully-ordered – how could it be otherwise?! – after-glow of ‘Gravité’. Barenboim’s shaping and balancing was spot on throughout, the chorus almost sounding as if a (pre-)electronic halo for solo voices, offering a presentiment of Anthèmes 2, following the interval. Messiaen again sprang to mind, again distanced, in the choral writing of the central ‘Le Visage nuptial’ itself. But soon, Bergian intensity – partly a matter of the composer’s revisions, partly something that was always there, even whilst he doubted late Berg’s taste for ‘reconciliation’, partly a matter of the particular orchestra and conductor – supplemented and questioned that. Controlled frenzy from the superlative percussion, and the rest of the orchestra, made for a truly thrilling ride, the sweetness of the Staatskapelle Berlin violins not the least of these heavenly, yet earthly, delights. After Parsifal the night before, it was as if Kundry had truly returned – and turned the tables. The subsiding of the movement prior to its final ecstatic burst was, again, expertly shaped by Barenboim. ‘Evadné’ offered psalmodic choral chanting as response, with the final ‘Post-Scriptum’ framing the narrative, such as it is, very nicely with the return of the excellent soloists. The fragility of the close once again proved suggestive in every sense.

The Philharmonie proved in many ways a splendid venue for Anthèmes 2, the live electronic shadowing of Michael Barenboim’s violin (expertly provided by Carlo Laurenzi and Jérémie Henriot) a showcase for a crucial aspect of Boulez’s later style. The kinship between earlier celestial choir and this proved striking, although Mephistophelian sniping (Liszt’s shadow?) was not to be denied either. Sweet post-Messiaenesque lines enhanced and were enhanced by occasional nods to an older, almost viol-like string tradition. This was a performance of which Barenboim fils could justly be proud – infinitely superior to the sorry state of Gidon Kremer’s violin technique three nights later (more on that in a subsequent review).

Barenboim père returned to the podium, with piano, for Notations. First, he offered a spoken introduction to the pieces (with piano and orchestral examples), the idea of Veränderung rightly to the fore. (Again, I thought of Liszt, still more of Wagner.) Each piano version preceded its orchestral child. If the piano versions were not always the most polished, and would in themselves be superseded by Michael Wenderberg’s superlative performances the following night, they did what they were supposed to, in spiritedly showing whence the orchestral versions had originated. Berg again came to mind in III (Très modéré); indeed, it was a (putative) brand of Klangfarbenmelodie related to him, perhaps, rather than to Schoenberg and Webern, that seemed the hallmark of that intriguing performance. There was, moreover, more than a soupçon of Debussyan awakening, in all its rich ambiguity. The Seventh, marked ‘Hiératique’, proved on a different scale in every sense to its predecessors, almost musico-dramatic in a Wagnerian and/or Mahlerian sense. Air from Debussy’s and Bartók’s planets vied with that of more Germanic ‘tradition’. For Boulez’s later serialism, this seemed an equivalent to Schoenberg’s Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene. As usual, the closing (for now) Second Notation offered a riotous conclusion – to an immaculately planned concert.

 

Salzburg Festival (7) - Der Rosenkavalier, 17 August 2014

Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Monika Rittershaus

 

Grosses Festspielhaus

Die Feldmarschallin Fürstin Werdenberg – Krassimira Stoyanova

Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Adrian Erőd
Sophie – Mojca Erdmann
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Silvana Dussmann
Valzacchi – Rudolf Schasching
Annina – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Police Officer – Tobias Kehrer
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Franz Supper
Faninal’s Major-domo – Martin Piskorski
A Notary – Dirk Aleschus
A Landlord – Roman Sadnik
A Singer – Stefan Pop
A Milliner – Alexandra Flood
A Vendor of Pets – Franz Gürtelschmied
Leopold – Rupert Grössinger
Lackeys/Waiters – Won Cheol Song, Franz Gruber, Friedrich Springer, Jens Musger
Lerchenauischen – Florian Boberski, Kiril Chobanov, Manuel Grabner, Helmut Höllriegl, Boris Lichtenberger, Christian Schläpfer
House Servant (Mohammed) – Liviu Burz 

Harry Kupfer (director)

Hans Schavernoch (set designs)
Yan Tax (costumes)
Jürgen Hoffmann (lighting)
Thomas Reimer (video design)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Wolfgang Götz)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Franz Welser-Möst (conductor)

 



Sophie (Mojca Erdmann) and Octavian (Sophie Koch)

Harry Kupfer’s production of Der Rosenkavalier is without a doubt the most thought-provoking of the stagings I saw at this year’s Salzburg Festival. It intrigued me during the first act, though I was not really sure how I felt about it; it grew on me during the second, and had won me over by the third. That seems to be a deliberate strategy, conducted in tandem with a gradual blossoming of colour from the severe near-monochrome of the early twentieth-century (time of composition) Marschallin’s palace to the more colourful inn of the third act, with certain carefully colour making its point in between. All around, photographs – untrustworthy memories – of celebrated Viennese landmarks from the Kunsthistorisches Musuem to the Prater make their point concerning recollection and reimagination. What I felt was missing was a further layering from an imaginary eighteenth century in which Hofmannsthal – if not necessarily Strauss – so painstakingly sets the action, but I learned to live with that, and again, by the time of the third act, had quite forgotten about it. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned there too.

 

For pretty much all of the action one would (rightly?) expect is present and correct, except not necessarily quite as one might initially have expected it, not the least of this opera’s lessons. A particular strength of Kupfer’s production is its light insistence upon the work’s metatheatricality, less overt than, say, Ariadne auf Naxos or Capriccio, but still important to its layering. One certainly has a good sense of the Marschallin as director, and indeed as fallible narrator/director. Are the snapshots hers, as might be suggested by the arrival of her extraordinarily – deliberately so – car at the end of the third act? What are the implications for agency here? Is she still in control? And what might that mean for Octavian and Sophie, here directed – and played – as a much stronger woman than one generally experiences?

 

The Marschallin (Krassimira Stoyanova)

 

The case of Sophie is especially interesting, since I admit that, in purely vocal terms, I did not find Mojca Erdmann’s portrayal especially inviting, hearing more of an Olympia than a Sophie, a strangely mechanical rendering at times. Yet, somehow, it worked, and the strength of character came across more strongly than I can recall. For once, it was quite possible to understand why Octavian might have made the choice he did. Sophie Koch’s portrayal of the role is well-known and did not disappoint on this occasion, the opera’s play with gender as captivating as ever. Krassimira Stoyanova presented a dignified Marschallin: no vulgar playing on the heart-strings here, and probably all the more moving for it. Moreover, her careful attention to the words could usefully be aped by certain more fêted exponents of the role. Günther Groissböck worked hard to present a less caricatured Ochs than one often suffers. What remained of caricature was probably ineradicable: a pity, but there is only so much one can do with the part. Groissböck’s was an uncommonly subtle reading, though, again born of laudable attention to the text. (It is perhaps a pity, though, that Kupfer seems to want to have Sophie having made up her mind against him from the very start; a little more contest and development would not necessarily go amiss.) To start with, I thought Adrian Erőd’s Faninal a little dry in tone, but that soon ceased to trouble me; perhaps I was just imagining it. The supporting cast was not always of the highest quality, but then there is a huge amount to cast here, and much, by the same token, was impressive. Rudolf Schasching’s coarsely sung Valzacchi was a rare true disappointment; Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s Annina was much more characterful. Roman Sadnik’s Landlord – intriguingly, though probably coincidentally, dressed and even very much looking like the owner of Triangel, the restaurant outside the house – offered a particularly vivid portrayal, whilst Rupert Grössinger (and Kupfer) made considerably more of Leopold, Ochs’s son, than is generally the case.

 

 

Ochs (Günther Groissböck)

The performances were originally to have been conducted by Zubin Mehta, who had to withdraw on medical grounds. Franz Welser-Möst was a generally efficient, if not exactly inspiring, replacement, the exception to efficiency lying in an inordinately drawn out close to the first act. (I thought it was never going to end, and I am rarely opposed to slower tempi.) It was certainly not a warm reading, but that to an extent married well with the production, especially earlier on. A little more whipped cream would not necessarily have done any harm, and there were perhaps a few more discrepancies between pit and stage than one might have expected. Still, there was much to savour, and to think about, both from production and from the performances on stage.

 

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

 Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Vykintas Baltakas – Eselbrücke

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

Mojca Erdmann (soprano)

Dietrich Henschel (baritone)

Scharoun Ensemble and other members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

Anthony Cragg: Caldera

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Lulu, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2012

Schiller Theater, Berlin



Images (c) Bernd Uhlig

Lulu – Mojca Erdmann

Countess Geschwitz – Deborah Polaski

Dresser, Gymnast – Anna Lapkovskaja Painter, Negro – Stephan Rügamer
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Michael Volle
Alwa – Thomas Piffka
Athlete – Georg Nigl
Schigolch – Jürgen Linn
Prince, Manservant – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Theatre Manager – Johann Werner Prein
Doctor of Medicine, Professor – Wolfgang Hübsch
Lulu's Doppelgängerin – Blanka Modrá, Liane Oßwald

Andrea Breth (director)
Erich Wonder (set designs)
Moidele Bickel (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Philipp Haupt (video)
David Robert Coleman (‘adaptation’ of the London Scene)
Jens Schroth (dramatic advisor)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Johann Werner Prein (Theatre Manager), Georg Nigl (Athlete), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Prince, or whoever he was supposed to be here...)

I am genuinely at a loss to know where to start with this performance of Lulu, but perhaps a little chronological background would be as good a place as any. Having admired Andrea Breth’s Salzburg production of Eugene Onegin, which he conducted, Daniel Barenboim invited her to direct Wozzeck and Lulu in Berlin. Wozzeck was much admired at last year’s Festtage; I thought highly of it, albeit with a few more reservations than many seem to have felt. It was certainly, however, a good enough production to have me look forward to Berg’s second opera. Except that it was not really Berg’s second opera at all: instead, Breth and Barenboim served up a bowdlerised version, a ‘Berliner Fassung’ for which I cannot imagine anyone had called, and which certainly did not seem to satisfy anyone in the theatre. The Prologue disappears completely, replaced by a horizontal actor’s drawn out reading from Kierkegaard and Lulu’s third-act scream, as does the Paris Scene from the Third Act. This is not a reversion to the old two-act version, though, even if one discounts the bizarre excision of the Prologue, in which the terms of the drama are set up, the whole world a stage or a circus. For the final scene, set in London, has been rewritten, adapted, call it what you will, by one David Robert Coleman, of whom I freely admit that I had never heard before. On the basis of this encounter, I sincerely hope that reunion should be indefinitely postponed. One might be able to take the use of a radio – presumably a recording, though it may just have been a strange acoustic trick – during the first act, but Coleman’s sketchy orchestration sounded more akin to an undergraduate’s first attempt to look through Berg’s manuscripts than a finished ‘version’, let alone a competitor to Friedrich Cerha’s standard completion.

A metaphor for the production?

Why was the latter not used? Presumably permission was refused, not unreasonably, on account of the decision to make cuts. Whose decision? Breth’s? Barenboim’s? The former’s, with the latter’s acquiescence? Why, why, why? It sounded as much a mess as what we saw onstage, of which more anon, despite fine musical performances, of which more anon. Berg’s harmonisation of the hurdy-gurdy Lautenlied is tossed aside in favour of a manifestly inferior version by Wedekind. This is not, of course, simply a matter of an inferior harmonisation, nor indeed of having missed the tune’s first appearance in the excised Paris Scene; dodecaphonic writing and method are completely undermined. This is musical violence from which I am frankly astonished that Barenboim did not recoil. Likewise when it comes to the violence done to Berg’s symmetries, dramatic and musical, is unconscionable; this is not some Italianate number-opera. It is mystifying that one of the truly great musicians of our time, someone who has collaborated closely with Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau, the team that brought us the first ever staging of the ‘complete’ Lulu, and one who has so excelled in the music of the Second Viennese School, should have acquiesced – if indeed, that is what happened. It was, apparently, at Barenboim’s invitation that Coleman put together his ‘version’, steel drums and all – yes, really! an intimation of an early jukebox, we are told – but was the original decision to travesty Berg’s opera made by Breth? Let us assume so, for it is difficult to imagine why someone conducting Lulu for the first time would wish not really to conduct Lulu at all.

Lulu (Mojca Erdmann), Geschwitz (Deborah Polaski)

Insofar as one can establish responsibility from Breth’s production, it seems likely that the idea was hers. She certainly seems to have no interest in Berg’s structures, substituting for them a tedious play of actors and mimed actions. The setting appears to be a cross between a production of a Beckett parody and a 1980s pop video, a grim warehouse with a crashed car and a great deal of scaffolding. (The latter actually provides a degree of relief; I found myself able to imagine in its structures some Bauhaus-like counterpoint to the constructivism, if not the Romanticism, of Berg’s score.) A great deal goes on, but relatively little seems to have anything to do with the opera itself, nor indeed with the ‘characters’ who sing in this production. Instead of a film of Lulu’s trial – why are directors, often so besotted with film, so reluctant to respect this necessary or at least advisable visual counterpoint to Berg’s palindrome? – we simply gaze upon a couple of filmed eyes, maybe Lulu’s, maybe not, whilst someone tips a woman out of a wheelbarrow, puts her back in again, and wheels her off. The sub-Beckett atmosphere is of questionable relevance to Berg, but I could discern no attempt even to make it fit. There is, of course, no change of scenery, despite the clear dramatic necessity to shift from one milieu to another. At the end, there is a minor conflagration, permitting more colour than has otherwise been permitted all evening. Just as with Christof Loy’s dreadful, indeed well-nigh unbearable, ‘minimalist’ production for Covent Garden, I cannot imagine that anyone not already well versed in the opera would have the faintest idea what was going on, or who anybody might be, let alone why one might care. If the idea were to excise supposed misogyny and perhaps other uncomfortably drawn characters – why, incidentally or perhaps not incidentally, is it so difficult to distinguish between attitudes voiced by characters and those voiced by creators? – then all that was achieved was to neuter, indeed almost to obliterate, the drama.

Lulu and Jack the Ripper (Michael Volle)

The truly odd thing about this whole fiasco is that Barenboim conducted what remained of Berg’s score superbly, so much so that one could almost, especially if one knew the score, fill in the gaps. Despite the ruptures, there was a true understanding of both dramatic and musical flow and the generative nature of Berg’s serial writing. Allied to a Staatskapelle Berlin on fine form, its dark, ‘old German’ sound a true joy to hear in this repertoire, one had a frustrating sense of what might have been. Much of the singing impressed too. Mojca Erdmann occasionally struggled, her voice running out of steam at one point until she elected to resume her cruelly high line an octave lower, but for the most part she sang as well as she acted: a credible doll-like approach that permitted all manner of coloratura parallels to be drawn. Michael Volle sang as well as one might have expected, in a role he seems well on the way to be making his own. If occasionally a little wobblier than one often hears in this part, Deborah Polaski’s Geschwitz was a forthright performance. If she did not tug on the heartstrings as one might hope, that was surely more a matter of the production and its cuts than anything else. Thomas Piffka sometimes sounded forced as Alwa, his lines consequently lacking shape, but elsewhere sang well enough. Stephan Rügamer was compelled to perform a very odd caricatured Negro dance, surely more offensive than anything alleged to be found in the opera itself, but nevertheless emerged with credit, as did Georg Nigl’s Athlete, who also had to perform a great deal of shadow-boxing in the background. Jürgen Linn’s Schigolch made surprisingly little impression, but again that may have been at least as much a matter of the production as anything else. The whole lasted about three hours, including one interval.

Again, why, why, why?

CPE and JS Bach - Hahn/Erdmann/Goerne/Munich CO/Liebreich, 23 March 2010

CPE Bach – Symphony in G major, Wq.173
JS Bach – Wer mich liebet, der Wird mein Wort halten, BWV 59: ‘Die Welt mit allen Königreichen’
Ich bin in mir vergnügt, BWV 204: ‘Die Schätzbarkeit der weitern Enden’
Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, BWV 157: ‘Ja, ja, ich halte meinen Jesum feste’
CPE Bach – Symphony in A major, Wq.182/4: ‘Allegro assai’
JS Bach – Der zufriedene Aeolus, BWV 205: ‘Angenehmer Zephyrus’
Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen, BWV 32: ‘Hier meines Vaters Stätte’
JS Bach (arr. Mendelssohn) – St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: ‘Erbarme dich’

JS Bach – Orchestral Suite no.2 in B minor, BWV 1067: Overture
Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut, BWV 117: ‘Wenn Trost und Hülf ermangeln muss’
Mass in B minor, BWV 232: ‘Laudamus te’
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140: ‘Wann kommst du, mein Heil?’
Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, : ‘Ich bin vergnügt in meinen Leiden’
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: ‘Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder’
Orchestral Suite no.3 in D major, BWV 1068: Air
Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158: ‘Welt ade! Ich bin dein müde’

Mojca Erdmann (soprano)
Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Hilary Hahn (violin)
Munich Chamber Orchestra
Alexander Liebreich (conductor)

A strange programme, this, with the appearance of little true rationale, beyond boosting sales of a recently released CD, featuring Hilary Hahn playing violin obbligato parts in Bach vocal movements, joined by Matthias Goerne, Christine Schäfer, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and Alexander Liebreich. Schäfer having fallen ill, Mojca Erdmann came to the rescue. But the true problem lay with a programme that remained very much less than the sum of its parts, made odder by the seemingly random inclusion of a symphony and a bit from CPE Bach. A golden opportunity to present some of the latter’s largely ignored vocal music was shunned, the early symphonic music sounding merely out of place by itself, even on the debatable terms of the programme as it otherwise stood.

As for the Emanuel Bach performances, the first symphony came off reasonably well: more than a little abrasive, but alas, one more or less has to expect that nowadays. The Sturm und Drang seemed overdone to me, feeling that I wanted to tell the conductor to calm down a bit, but the hyperactivity had a certain place as a curtain raiser. Likewise, the movement from the A major symphony had a sense of the theatre to it, akin to an operatic interlude. The problem was that this was hardly appropriate to the excerpts from Bach père. Admittedly, this was a movement from a secular cantata, itself seeming somewhat out of place amongst the sacred music, but even so, the change of register was odd. And whilst Bach have employed formerly secular music for sacred purposes, the words changed – which was not the case here.

The lack of coherence was underlined by the abrupt change of performance style following the orchestral introduction. As soon as Hilary Hahn came to the stage, the violin tone we heard was unambiguously ‘modern’, as opposed to period. For the most part, she played alone with continuo or occasional other obbligato appearances (flute and, very briefly, oboe), so the contrast was underlined further. Indeed, the lack of something to do for the orchestra for much of the time itself contributed further to the problematical nature of the programme. But Hahn’s performances – much more Academy of St Martin in the Fields than present-day Munich CO, though listen to old recordings to hear how the orchestra used to sound… – were impeccably presented, clean of tone but never clinical. In this, she had much in common with Erdmann’s bell-like soprano; the two worked well together. From their first joint appearance, in the aria from BWV 204, there was a sense of objectivity that was not chilly, but which rather permitted Bach’s doctrine, theological and musical, to speak for itself.

Matthias Goerne’s contributions, fine in themselves, seemed less connected to what the other soloists were doing, or vice versa. In the closing duet – one of only two – there was little interplay between the two singers, though that between baritone and violinist on the one hand, and soprano and oboist for the chorale, was noteworthy. Some of the most distinguished playing, though arising from quite a different school of Bach interpretation, came from the continuo performers, especially Rosario Conte’s theorbo and Kristin von der Goltz’s plangent, almost gamba-like cello. Tempi, in the first half pleasantly unsurprising, tended to the more eccentric in the second half. The ‘Laudamus te’, shorn from the B minor Mass, was absurdly fast, likewise Goerne’s ‘Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder,’ which sounded merely petulant. Liebreich should listen to his Klemperer and Richter. What sounded as though it might be an interesting curiosity, Mendelssohn’s arrangement for soprano of ‘Erbarme dich,’ presented nothing that was characteristic of its arranger. There is no harm in hearing the aria for soprano, I suppose, and Erdmann sang it with expressive restraint, but one is so used to hearing a lower voice – Christa Ludwig an ideal here – that it is probably more an opportunity for sopranos than audiences.

Doubtless fans of the artists concerned – though presumably not those of Christine Schäfer – went away happy. The programme, however, failed to satisfy: not quite a collection of encores, but with about as much integrity. To have heard a selection of, rather than from, Bach cantatas performed by these musicians would have constituted a far richer experience. Even to have been permitted to hear the recitatives that would have prefaced the arias would have afforded a measure of context. That the programme notes acknowledged Deutsche Grammophon for texts and translations told us what we needed to know concerning priorities.