Biss/Philharmonia/Valčuha - Strauss, Mozart, and Humperdinck, 4 December 2014

Royal Festival Hall

 

 

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271

Humperdinck – Hänsel und Gretel: Suite

Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

 

 

Jonathan Biss (piano)

Olena Tokar (soprano)

Kai Rüütel (mezzo-soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Juraj Valčuha (conductor)

 

As Strauss year draws towards a close, the Philharmonia under Juraj Valčuha offered a rather lovely pendant, two of his own works – the Rosenkavalier Suite sort of counts – paired with excerpts from an opera whose premiere he conducted, and an early masterpiece from the composer he, rightly, adored above all others. I still have two major performances to go: both Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra in Dresden (on which I shall report back soon), but this certainly kept me going in the meantime.

 

So extraordinarily accomplished and characteristic is Don Juan that we can forget how early a work it is; indeed, Strauss was only three years older than Mozart was when he composed his Ninth Piano Concerto. There was certainly nothing jejune to this account from Valčuha’s and the Phiharmonia. The opening was precise, not pedantic, its vitality and indeed vitalism aided by the greatest orchestral clarity and cultivation. Immediately afterwards, Valčuha displayed a commendable, meaningful flexibility that marked out this performance as integrative, in a well-nigh Wagnerian, musico-dramatic sense, rather than streamlined and shoehorned. Perhaps there was the occasional transition which might have been smoother still, but that is really to nit-pick, and perhaps to attempt a trade off with the keen sense of drama achieved. There was a beautifully judged early sunset, always a pertinent Straussian test; this was noble, without a hint of sentimentality, just as the Lenau-Strauss hero should be. A deep string sound worked wonders, passages with violas, cellos, and basses together reminding us that there are gains as well as losses to the now-unfashionable arrangement that has them seated together. Horns at that moment, followed by violins in all their Straussian glory, told us what mattered about this hero. His materialist death, in all its necessary instrumental detail, could not eclipse that memory.

 

As Jonathan Biss was about to come on stage for the concerto, Mitsuko Uchida crept into the Stalls: quite an endorsement, by any standards. The visible keenness of her listening and the generosity of her response would almost have been worth the price of admission in themselves. I was perhaps a little less enamoured with Biss’s performance, although there was certainly much to admire. Valčuha proved himself an expert ‘accompanist’, the opening to the first movement at least as alert as that to Don Juan. The Philharmonia offered wonderfully cultivated playing once again, deftly shaped by the conductor. Biss responded with clear, at times even pearly tone, my principal reservation about this movement simply being the tempo: was it perhaps a little too hurried? One might argue that this is a young man’s music, but I am not sure what that proves; in any case, does not all of Mozart’s music fall into that category? There was no quarrel to be had, though, with the shaping of phrases. Form was very clearly defined; particularly noticeable was the sense of kinship with older concerto forms in the orchestral tutti. Although the second movement was again on the swift side, it did not feel hurried. Operatic sadness and import were well judged. Likewise, there was a fine sense of musico-dramatic impetus, bringing us perhaps closer to Strauss than one might have thought, and certainly reminding us of another of his enthusiasms, the operas of Gluck. Above all, harmonic rhythm was understood and communicated. The finale lifted the spirits with a good nature to rival Haydn’s. Although its minuet was certainly graceful, Biss was perhaps a little cool. There was no doubting, however, his technique; repeated notes, for instance, were an object lesson in performance.

 

It would take a sterner, steelier soul than mine to resist the call of those opening horns in the Overture to Hänsel und Gretel, especially when so tenderly played – the German weich seems so apt here – and so warmly responded to. I was drawn in, just as if in the opera house. Valčuha thereafter served up a lovable pot pourri, perhaps not quite so symphonic as when I heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the opera at Covent Garden, but that is a comparison unduly odious. Olena Tokar, whom I had previously admired in Das Liebesverbot in Leipzig, and Kai Rüütel, whom I heard as Echo in this opera at its Royal Opera revival, both impressed in the opening duet and beyond. Voices and characters were sharply differentiated, Valčuha showing himself to be an operatic ‘natural’. (He is, I later learned, due this season to conduct Parsifal in Budapest, Turandot in Naples, and Jenůfa in Bologna.) And yes, your stern Beckmesser melted in the dance song. The Sandman’s Song followed, Tokar benefiting from breathtaking orchestral stillness at its opening; this certainly had that necessary sense of magic. The sincerity of Tokar’s delivery, when she told of angels bringing down sweet dreams from heaven, brought at least one tear to my eye. Following the Prayer, the siblings left the stage for the concluding Dream Pantomime, whose shaping was undoubtedly symphonic, Wagnerian brass and all. If Valčuha lingered just a little long towards the end, it was a fault readily forgiven.

 

For all one might suspect there to be affinity, what struck with the opening of the Rosenkavalier Suite – yes, I am afraid, the wretched 1945 assemblage, to whom no one ever seems to have owned up – was difference. A glistening edge returned to the orchestra. Romanticism was dead; modernist phantasmagoria – and what phantasmagoria! – was enthroned in all its assiduously pictorial glory. There was no doubt what was being depicted in the Prelude’s thrusting and afterglow. Even without voices, the Presentation of the Rose was well handled. Valčuha could not paper over some of the later cracks, but I am not sure that anyone has ever been able to do so. At least we got to enjoy the luck of the Lerchenaus with a decent swagger and lilt.

 

I hope that we shall hear more from this conductor, both in the concert hall and in the opera house. Both ENO and the Royal Opera would be well advised to offer him engagements.

Das Liebesverbot, Oper Leipzig, 13 October 2013

Images: Kirsten Nijhof

Leipzig Opera House

Brighella – Reinhard Dorn

Pontio Pilato – Martin Petzhold
Luzio – Mark Adler
Claudio – Daniel Kirch
Antonio – Dan Karlström
Angelo – Jürgen Kurth
Danieli – Sejung Chang
Friedrich – Tuomas Pursio
Isabella – Lydia Easley
Mariana – Olena Tokar

Dorella – Magdalena Hinterdobler

Aron Stiehl (director)

Jürgen Kirner (set designs)
Sven Bindsell (costumes)
Christian Schatz (lighting)
Christian Geltinger (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Leipzig Opera (chorus master: Alessandro Zuppardo)
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Matthias Foremny (conductor)

Das Liebesverbot, Wagner’s second completed opera, marked an advance upon his first, Die Feen, in one respect. It was performed in his lifetime – once, in Magdeburg, on 29 March 1836, in what Wagner, in Mein Leben, would describe as a ‘totally muddled performance’, such that the ‘material ... remained utterly obscure to the public’. For the second performance, there appeared to be only three people in the stalls, ‘Frau Gottschalk with her husband and a very conspicuous Polish Jew in full costume.’ Drama of a rather different kind, however, ensued behind the stage:
 

There, Herr Pollert, the husband of my leading lady (who was taking the part of Isabella), had run across the second tenor, Schreiber, a very young and handsome man who was to sing my Claudio, against whom the offended husband had long nursed a secret rancour born of jealousy. ... My Cluadio took such a pasting ... that the unfortunate fellow had to retreat into the dressing-room, his face bloodied. Isabella received news of this, and plunged after her raging husband in desperation, only to be so soundly cuffed by him that she went into a fit. The uproar among the ensemble soon knew no bounds: people took sides, and it wouldn’t have taken much more to produce a free-for-all, for it seemed that this unhappy evening offered everyone a suitable occasion to pay off mutual grievances once and for all. It was soon evident that the two who had been subjected to Herr Pollert’s ‘ban on love’ were quite incapable of mounting the stage that day. The stage director was sent before the curtain to advise the curiously select gathering in the auditorium that ‘owing to unforeseen difficulties’ the performance of the opera could not take place.

 

With that came ‘the end’ of Wagner’s ‘career as conductor and composer of operas in Magdeburg. The story might make rather a good opera in itself, or at least a metatheatrical conceit for a staging of Wagner’s own ‘ban on love’ opera: Die Novize von Palermo, as it had to be called, in order to satisfy the Lenten censor. (Wagner’s assurance that it had been ‘adapted from a very serious Shakespearean play,’ Measure for Measure, also seems to have helped.)

 

Such, in this co-production with Bayreuth – two performances took place there not in the Festspielhaus as part of the Festival proper, but in the Oberfrankenhalle, in July – was not, however, to be the case. There were, moreover, many more people in the Leipzig audience; indeed, the stalls on this occasion were close to full. Let us leave, though, on one side my Konzept, which, should they ever deign to stage the work, I am happy to let one of our English companies have for nothing. The Leipzig staging has some powerful moments, though some that left me a little bewildered too. Jürgen Kirner’s set designs provide an impressive backdrop, especially for the monochrome coldness of the hypocritical viceroy Friedrich’s office, and the convent scene, in which Isabella, newly admitted, receives news from Luzio, of her brother Claudio’s impending ‘death penalty for an amorous escapade’ (Mein Leben). There, relative abstraction and a sign of the Cross strike just the right balance between the serenity of the setting and a warning that Wagner’s Young German concerns wish to promote a ‘victory of free sensualism over puritanical hypocrisy’, as the composer put it in his Autobiographical Sketch for Heinrich Laube’s Zeitung für die elegente Welt. (Laube himself was quite an influence upon this and subsequent Wagner dramas, Tannhäuser included.) That, presumably, was also the justification for a recurring screen emblazoned with what seemed to be photographs of a lush, tropical rainforest, complete with insects. Sicilian heat might, however, have been more clearly expressed with something a little closer to home. Giant masks for the forbidden and ultimately victorious Carnival – though is it ultimately to be victorious? – offer an intriguing hint that apparent licence may cast its own dialectical authoritarianism.

Tuomas Pursio (Friedrich)

 

Without a stronger overall directorial conception, though, a post-modern æsthetic, with hippyish costumes for the apostles of free(-ish) love, older dress for the forces of authority, something more ‘timeless’ for Isabella and her friend Mariana in the convent, and so on, does not necessarily add up to the sum of its parts, let alone something more than them. For Aron Stiehl, in his direction of the work, sometimes seems more intent upon ironising it than engaging with Wagner’s concerns; irony and Wagner are if not quite impossible partners than bedfellows for whom comfort is of little concern. In what is, perhaps, in musical terms the composer’s weakest completed opera, he probably needs a little more help than this. Silly dances for the chorus send up rather than probe Wagner’s not-entirely-successful attempt at Italianate levity. The score itself insists that, whatever his would-be libertinism, he cannot let go of the Germanic roots that had served him so well in Die Feen and would soon do so again. Such is, of course, at odds with Wagner’s alleged dramatic concerns: Friedrich and German regulation are very much the enemy. The concluding surprise, in which Friedrich re-emerges, apparently to take command once again of the situation and meet the King, is an interesting step, quite at odds with Wagner’s crowd-dispensed justice, in which the viceroy is permitted by the crowd, far more clement than he, to lose himself in the carnival celebration. It would, however, register more powerfully as a questioning of the work – in any case, something of a difficult task, when relatively few in the audience will know the opera – were it better prepared. It jars – such, at any rate, was my experience in the theatre, as opposed to my post hoc attempt at explication – rather than convinces dramatically. Still, Personenregie is in itself accomplished; one gains a sense that the characters are doing what they have been asked.    
     

 

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra offered a typically deep and burnished sound, though there were moments when ensemble was not as tight as one might have hoped for. Conductor Matthias Foremny may well, however, have been at fault in that respect, for his reading often seemed a little unsure whether to stress the Teutonic or the Italianate, not only falling been two stools, which, given Wagner’s score, might well be fair enough, even fruitful, but hesitant. The (relatively) well-known Overture, in which most of Wagner’s more memorable melodic ideas put in an appearance, was a case in point. It may be unfair to draw a comparison with Wolfgang Sawallisch’s excellent Munich recording (or indeed, his Philadelphia recording of the Overture alone), but the conviction required to harness disparate elements, to channel them into a more-or-less convincing sequence, if not quite an organic whole, was missing here. Foremny’s stopping and starting was to a certain extent overcome as the performance progressed; however, I could not help but wonder what might have come from a less Kapellmeister-ish account, such, for instance, as Ulf Schirmer had offered earlier in the year, for Leipzig’s splendid production of Die Feen.

 

Christiane Libor had played Isabella on the first night; for this second-night performance,  she was replaced by Lydia Easley. It seemed to take a little while for Easley fully to get into her stride, and there were a few questionable moments of intonation when it came to coloratura, but hers was on the whole an impressive, convincing performance. Olena Tokar made a fine impression as Mariana, the wronged, abandoned wife of Friedrich, especially in a beautifully-sung account of her second-act aria. Daniel Kirch and Mark Adler offered much to admire as Claudio and Luzio; it would be good to hear more of them in later, more substantial Wagner roles. Reinhard Dorn’s Brighella (the Sbirri chief) was stronger on comic action than vocal beauty, but perhaps that was the point. He certainly contrasted well with the more malevolent and indeed more complex Friedrich of Tuomas Pursio, whose stage presence and vocal delivery exerted a fascination perhaps beyond the strict merits of the score. Choral singing was of a high standard throughout, especially so in the second act. We can safely assume, then, that, whatever reservations might be voiced concerning the production, the Leipzig audience had a far better opportunity to see and to hear something approaching Wagner’s conception, however flawed, than the bewildered citizens of Magdeburg ever did, or Wagner ever would.