For International Women's Day

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

Images: (c) Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

Orlando – Kate Lindsey

Narrator – Anna Clementi

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

Polly Graham (director)

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

Vienna State Opera Choral Academy

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

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

Stage Orchestra and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musikfest Berlin (11) - Karajan Academy/Mälkki: Neuwirth and Grisey, 18 September 2019

Kammermusiksaal

Image © Monika Karczmarczyk

Neuwirth: Aello: ballet mécanomorphe (2016-17)

Grisey: Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998)

Emmanuel Pahud (flute)

Juliet Fraser (soprano)

Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

All good things must come to an end. This year’s Musikfest Berlin has been a very good thing indeed. I had hoped to go to Rusalka in concert performance to round things off, but alas that was not to be. This concert of works by Olga Neuwirth and Gérard Grisey, however, proved if anything a more fitting way to conclude, in performances from the young players of the Berlin Philharmonic’s Karajan Academy, under the wise leadership of Susanna Mälkki, to rival those of many a new music ensemble.

I first heard Neuwirth’s Aello as part of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s Brandenburg Project’, in which new works were commissioned to accompany Bach’s six concerti grossi. Then I wrote that it was ‘to my ears, by far the strongest of the new works’. Two years later, my ears found at least as much to fascinate and to enjoy. Having Emmanuel Pahud on flute (later bass flute) is unlikely ever to be a bad thing; it certainly was not here, in a performance of expressive virtuosity. As soloist, or first among equals, he was joined by two muted trumpets (piccolo in B-flat and in C), and three first violins, all at the flute pitch of 443 Hz; three second violins (431 Hz); two violas (443); two cellos (450); synthesiser (433, with guest artist, Majella Stockhausen); mechanical typewriter (Olivetti Lettera 22); hotel reception bell; wine-glass, with unknown (to me) liquid content, at pitch e’’; and small triangle with milk-frother. The machine element, then, is – and, in performance, was – important, acknowledgement no doubt of recent, to my mind highly regrettable, tendencies in Bach performance, from 1950s ‘sewing machine Baroque’ onwards. There was nothing, however, puritanical to what we heard, quite the contrary. Not only were there ghosts aplenty in the machine; they were having fun. Rhythms were tight, in a good way, facilitating metrical, melodic, and harmonic turns. Memories of Bach, often in the foreground, offered a framework for listening, in a fashion that perhaps might recall Berio, albeit without straightforward, evident ‘influence’. One listened, was aided to listen, on several levels at once. A closing climax both mechanistic and thrilling still left space for a fine surprise, whose secret I shall not spoil here, on the final note.

Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, for which the players were joined by the ever-excellent Juliet Fraser, made for an intriguing contrast, evolution perhaps replacing mechanism. (Does that implicit contrast not already, however, beg several questions?) A pattern of almost, yet never quite, imperceptible openings – the first, in the Prélude, surely most so, and not only because one’s ears have yet to adjust – sets up such expectation; though expectations are there to be, if not confounded, then at least developed and questioned. Fraser’s emphatic intonation of her opening pitches received ‘backing’ that might almost have seemed ambient, until one listened. Process was clear: settling and unsettling, almost yet not quite according to one’s strategy of listening. How a voice’s, or rather this particular voice’s, timbre might be echoed, continued, by a trumpet or a clarinet was not the least of the mysteries to be savoured rather than resolved. Tuning, for instance in the Interlude between the first and second songs, continued to unsettle, somehow being both right and wrong simultaneously, the harmonic spectrum working its wonders, yet working them against an occasionally nagging backdrop of what we, or at least I, otherwise ‘knew’. By the time we had reached the fourth song, ‘La mort de l’humanité’, from the Epic of Gilgamesh, I began to wonder whether the change effected on my listening might have negative consequences for returning to the music I love, and perhaps know, so well. A brief, pointless fantasy, no doubt, yet testament to the transformational qualities of work and performance, whose form seemed to have something both natural and magical to them. We had observed, heard, perhaps experienced the deaths of an angel, of civilisation, of the voice, and now of humanity, but that did not necessarily seem to have been a bad thing. There will always, after all, remain ghosts in the machine; or will there?

Musikfest Berlin (3) - Ensemble Modern/Lubman: Varèse, Neuwirth, and Andriessen, 4 September 2019

Philharmonie

Varèse: Déserts, for fourteen wind instruments, piano, percussion, and three interpolations for electronically organised sound (1949-54, revised 1960-61)

Neuwirth: locus…doublure…solus, for piano and ensemble (2001)

Andriessen: De Materie, Part III: ‘De Stijl’, for four women’s voices, female speaker, and large ensemble (1985)

Hermann Kretzchmar (piano)

Catherine Milliken (speaker)

Norbert Ommer (sound direction)

Chorwerk Ruhr (chorus director: Klaas Stok)

Ensemble Modern

Brad Lubman (conductor)

'De Stijl'  (images: © Adam Janisch)

‘I no longer believe in concerts, in the sweat of conductors and the flying storms of virtuosi’s dandruff, and am only interested in recorded music. That is why I must wait. There are more opportunities in Europe for this kind of activity, but one would have to be there, and unfortunately Europe is no place to make a living. It will come, and in the States.’ As predictions for the future go, Varèse’s words of 1952 to André Jolivet are as hopeless as those of any soothsayer. However, the work with which he would break his compositional silence – at least in terms of music completed – two years later, Déserts, was certainly not lacking in consequences for the future. This fascinating programme from Ensemble Modern and Brad Lubman was not in that sense didactic but suggestive. It would nevertheless have been difficult and not a little perverse not to draw connections when and where they presented themselves. As Musikfest Berlin’s website had it, ‘“De materia”, on music and matter, could be the title of Ensemble Modern’s programme.’ Indeed – and that was in part how I heard it.

‘Deserts,’ Varèse explained, was for him ‘a highly evocative word. It suggests space, solitude, detachment. To me it means not only deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, of outer space, of deserted city streets, not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness and aloofness but also the remote inner space of the mind no telescope can reach, a world of mystery and essential loneliness.’ And yet – is there not always a ‘yet’? – the title was personal, ‘not intended as a description of the music’. For what struck me at the highly dramatic – take that as you will – opening to this performance from Ensemble Modern and Brad Lubman was the sense almost of a portal to another world, of invitation, and then of entry into that world. Wind instruments, all fourteen of them, still spoke of Stravinsky; it could hardly be otherwise, but not in any derivative sense, connection to the past offering degrees of comfort and reinvigoration in equal measure. Doublings of piano and (other) percussion instruments were incisive, suggestive to my ears of later Boulez (sur Incises!), but auguries are strange things, to be distrusted especially when they seduce us. I still have my doubts about the taped sections, but there was an interesting impression of antiphonal response between ensemble and the ‘recorded music’ of which Varèse wrote to Jolivet, a relationship not to be reduced to, but in some sense related to, a parallel relationship between ‘real’ and ‘surreal’, such as would also feature in Olga Neuwirth’s locus…doublure…solus. There was certainly, for me at least, vivid senses of different perspectives, of landscapes real and metaphorical, even, dare I say, of the old idealist dualism of phenomenal and noumenal. Anyone can juxtapose and contrast. With Varèse, though, both in work and performance, there was more: both clearly and subtly. The close brought a feeling of departure from wherever, whenever, we had visited: a final aural glance over the shoulder, then, and it was over.

Neuwirth’s 2001 work for piano and ensemble, as already implied, brought kinship and contrast. Drama and landscape, yes, Stravinskian remnants too, but something harsher too, perhaps, the (proto-)surrealist starting-point (Raymond Roussel’s novel Locus solus) notwithstanding. Titles, as Varèse had already told us, can be dangerous things when they limit rather than liberate our understanding. A fascination with rhythm and a certain hieratic quality revealed themselves, in a landscape that sounded as much urban as garden, but then the novel’s estate is anything but a mere walk in the park. Repetition of various parameters – pitch, rhythm, and timbre in particular – accrued great dramatic power and an unmistakeably modernist sense of wonder, even enchantment. Wandering pitches suggested, as in Varèse, wandering through a decidedly constructed landscape, but was it an earthly city or something beyond? Flânerie, marching invasion, observation, and much else besides seemed suggested: metaphors, not mere depiction, Hermann Kretzschmar’s piano virtuosity a necessary response, even rebellion. Awe-inspiring final climax and resonance brought closure that was in retrospect as surprising as it was undeniable.

And then for something completely different; or was it? Ultimately, I think it was, yet ‘De Stijl’, the third part of Louis Andriessen’s De Materie, appeared in context as welcome, even necessary, contrast, its directness of line, its pulsating energy very much a response to the intricacies and alternative standpoints of both Varèse and Neuwirth. Having unwisely checked my telephone during the interval, and thus having heard news of what sounded as though it were a wrecking amendment to the bill going through Parliament, yet which transpired to be a typically damp Kinnock squib, I responded with perhaps unusual keenness to the vigour of Andriessen’s response to Mondrian: ‘The perfect straight line is “the” perfect line.’ Stravinsky remained, yet transformed, this time in a guise both aggressive, thrilling, and ultimately humanistic, that puts most other minimalism – if, indeed, this be ‘minimalism’ at all – to shame. Repetition functioned in a very different way from Neuwirth’s, yet no less dramatically. Sheer volume played its part. So too, though, did music theatre, narrator Catherine Milliken and four female voices from Chorwerk Ruhr as powerful and precise as the instrumentalists and Lubman. Once it was over, strangely, I felt very little, perhaps nothing. It had been music for the moment – but that, I think, may well have been the point. For better or worse, my telephone and its unending stream of ‘news’ awaited. The relief, however, could not have been more welcome.

Tallies of concert and total (concert and opera) performances, 2018

Before Christmas, I posted my tally of opera performances attended during the year. Having attended my final concert of the year last night, I can now do the same for concerts and, below, combined. I may have miscounted, forgotten the odd thing I did not review, etc. Encores are not included (if only because I have not always noted them down). One appearance in a single programme counts once. What does this show? Not very much, perhaps. It certainly does not reflect what is performed; I naturally tend to choose performances I think will interest me. On the other hand, if no possibilities to hear Webern had presented themselves - which sometimes they do not - I should not have been able to hear his music on six different occasions. Moreover, if I can hardly lay claim to anything approaching gender balance here, it is good to see three women composers - Charlotte Bray, Helen Grime, and Olga Neuwirth - receive more than one performance. Neuwirth would have had another, had bronchitis not had me miss one of hers.


It is good, in any case, to see Brahms - often the target of a bizarre loathing more suited to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first - come on top of the concert list and indeed to share second place in the aggregated list with Wagner. If Mozart comes out on top, I am certainly not going to complain. Click here, for the sake of comparison, for the lists for 2017.

Concert tally

11 Brahms

9 Haydn

8 Debussy, Schubert

7 Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky

6 Schoenberg, Webern

4 Berg, Mahler, Mozart, Schumann, Stockhausen

3 Ligeti, Liszt, Prokofiev, Strauss, Tchaikovsky

2 Bartók, Berio, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Helen Grime, Janáček, Olga Neuwirth, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Wagner, Zemlinsky

1 Mark Andre, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Andris Dzenītis, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Holst, Philippe Hurel, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Weber, Hedy West, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow

Overall

13 Mozart

11 Brahms, Wagner

10 Haydn

9 Debussy

8 Schubert, Strauss

7 Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

6 Webern

5 Stockhausen

4 Berg, Janáček, Mahler, Prokofiev, Puccini, Schumann, Tchaikovsky

3 Ligeti, Liszt

2 Bartók, Berio, Benjamin, Bizet, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Handel, Helen Grime, Olga Neuwirth, Poulenc, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Turnage, Weber, Zemlinsky

1 Ondřej Adámek, Daniel Blanco Albert, Mark Andre, Lennoz Berkley, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Britten, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, John Casken, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Peter Maxwell Davies, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Dusapin, Andris Dzenītis, Gottfried von Einem, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gershwin, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Hindemith, Holst, Humperdinck, Philippe Hurel, Elfyn Jones, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Edward Lambert, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Monteverdi, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Philip Venables, Huw Watkins, Hedy West, Alastair White, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow, Na’ama Zisser

Neuwirth/Breslauer - Die Stadt ohne Juden, PHACE/Paz, 15 November 2018

Milton Court Concert Hall

Images: Mark Allan/Barbican

PHACE

Nacho de Paz (conductor)

The rediscovery of Hans Karl Breslauer’s 1924 silent film, Die Stadt ohne Juden (‘The City Without Jews’), has involved a degree of reconstruction. Based on Hugo Bettauer’s novel of the same name, published two years earlier, the film was long thought lost and had indeed pretty much disappeared from broader public consciousness. Olga Neuwirth saw the first fragmented discovered in the Netherlands when she was twenty-two; further material for the ‘new’, present version was later spotted in a Paris flea market, but this reconstruction and restoration by the Austrian Film Archive almost certainly diverge from what was originally seen (especially when it comes to the ‘dream’ conclusion). Neuwirth’s approach from the head of the Vienna Biennale to compose a new score to accompany performances came as a consequence of that Paris rediscovery. She initially declined, not least since she was at work on her new opera for Vienna, Orlando, but was eventually persuaded to take a break from work on that score. The co-commission comes from the Barbican Centre, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, ZDF/ARTE, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra.

Bettauer’s novel seems to have been darker than the film. (I say ‘seems to’, since I must rely on secondary information, not yet having had chance to read it for myself. I shall now certainly try to do so.) His other writings include treatments of US ‘interracial’ marriage and various women’s issues. He was also an early victim of Austrian Nazism, condemned as a ‘red poet’ and ‘corrupter of youth’, and murdered in 1925 by Otto Rothstock, a dental technician and (most likely) party member. Breslauer, on the other hand, seems to have been an opportunist: happy to make films with Jews, to introduce scenes of Viennese Jewish life – fascinating as historical documents too – into the film, scenes not present in the book, yet also willing later on to join the Nazi Party and to make propaganda films. Such is obviously in itself a fascinating, disturbing context for a twenty-first-century composer, let alone one so socially and politically aware as Neuwirth.

It is, of course, impossible for us not to view a film about Vienna, sorry Utopia, let alone a film in which that city votes to expel its Jewish population – here with the happy ending that it staves off economic collapse by welcoming that population back, a Jewish hero also getting the girl – through post-Holocaust spectacles. That said, it does us no harm and indeed much good to attempt additionally to view it from a 1920s standpoint. (That holds even, perhaps especially, when we are trying to come to terms with what would later ensue.) Neuwirth’s score, for live ensemble of amplified instruments and tape, plays with distance and avoids the potential Romanticism – as she sees it – of writing portentously for a large orchestra, as was initially requested of her. There is an irony here that it is tempting to view in part as Jewish; I cannot help but think Heine would have approved. It was important for Neuwirth not to fall into the trap, as, following Hanns Eisler, she see it, of mere representation. Nevertheless, she employs fragments of found material, be it Austrian popular song, sonorities of the twenties (for instance, saxophone salon music) to bridge the gap between ‘then’ and ‘now’. This is emphatically not something to consign to ‘history’, nor should it be. The excellence of performances from PHACE under Nacho de Paz, perfectly synchronised with the demands of film accompaniment, did likewise. Neuwirth’s longstanding interest in film – at eighteen, she studied both film and music, before opting to concentrate on the latter – takes, after Long Highway, another productive turn.

In brief discussion with Bryony Gordon beforehand, Neuwirth related the irony of having arrived in London to hear Theresa May echo the words of the Utopian Chancellor on ‘leadership’. This is not, repeat not, an issue to be consigned to ‘history’. Alas, as history shows us time and time again, by the time we start to think, artistically to create, it is almost always too late. We ‘citizens of nowhere’: we know, like the Windrush Generation, like our EU27 brothers and sisters, where May’s Utopia will lead.

Proms 29 and 30 – Swedish CO/Dausgaard - ‘The Brandenburg Project’: Bach, Turnage, Hillborg, Caine, Neuwirth, Dean, and Mackey. 5 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046

Mark-Anthony Turnage: Maya (2014, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BWV 1048

Anders Hillborg: Bach Materia (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.5 in D major, BWV 1050

Uri Caine: Hamsa (2015, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.4 in G major, BWV 1049

Olga Neuwirth: Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016-17, UK premiere)

Brett Dean: Approach – Prelude to a Canon (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV 1047

Steven Mackey: Triceros (2015, UK premiere)

Fiona Kelly, Claire Chase (flutes)

Per Gross, Katarina Wiedell (recorders)

Lisa Almberg, Daniel Burstedt, Mårten Larsson (oboes)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Göran Hülphers, Terése Larsson (horns)

Pekka Kuusisto, Antje Weithaas (violins)

Brett Dean, Tabea Zimmermann (violas)

Maya Beiser (cello)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Uri Caine (piano)

Swedish Chamber Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

It is always a fascinating prospect to hear contemporary and indeed earlier composers respond to repertoire works. Think of Mozart learning from and adding to Bach and Handel. Last year in Vienna, I heard newly commissioned responses from eight composers to Le Marteau sans Maître, interspersed with the movements of Boulez’s work. This summer, Bach’s were the masterpieces, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra having commissioned six composers to write companion pieces to each of his Brandenburg Concertos. Rarely if ever will all contributions be of equal stature or prove equally satisfying to different tastes. Such was certainly not the case, in my experience, with the responses to Boulez; nor was it to be so here. Alas, only two of the new works seemed to me to have been worth the effort; the other four proved at best over-extended and, in at least two cases, probably more, meretricious. Still, even in somewhat variable performances of the ‘originals’, Bach, as Boulez would have put it, remained.

First up was the first of Bach’s set of six. Its first movement was light, airy, not unlike Claudio Abbado’s late way with these pieces with his Orchestra Mozart, if not quite so secure. Although there was much to admire in the playing of the Swedish CO under Thomas Dausgaard, here and elsewhere, rarely if ever did I gain the feeling of being truly grounded in Bach’s music; it seemed as much an excursion to them as, perhaps still more so than, the new works. Still, it breathed – just about, and was well balanced, in itself no mean feat. What a relief, moreover, it was to hear modern horns in this music. The following Adagio enjoyed some delectable oboe playing; I also loved the dark, velvety bassoon tone. Its successor danced freely – not, thank goodness, in the bizarrely dogmatic ‘This is a Baroque dance and this is how a Baroque dance must sound and be experienced, exterminate, exterminate…’ so prevalent in certain circles. Mahan Esfahani, playing harpsichord continuo throughout the first concert, never failed to work with Bach’s harmony, to call it by name and thus create it anew (if I may slightly misquote Adorno). If certain ‘effects’ in the Polacca irritated, the closing dances nevertheless beguiled. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Maya perplexed – that is, before it merely bored. Beautifully played by all concerned, not least cello soloist, Maya Beiser, its status as response, companion piece, anything at all to the Bach work was less unclear than absent. It did not employ the same musical forces, had no connection, at least so far as I could hear, to its material; worst of all, though, it came across as a frankly cynical prolongation of what might have been a couple of minutes or so of television serial mood music. Vaguely blues-y at times, vaguely threnody-like, it might initially have filled a gap in a concert programme; soon, however, I developed a suspicion that the gap would have been better left unfilled.

Bach’s Third Concerto offered cultivated modern playing, albeit with very small forces. (Is that really a sensible way to treat this music in the Royal Albert Hall?) It was not hard-driven as so many authenticke performances tend to be, even if it lacked a good deal in gravitas. Again, it was the continuo playing that afforded the greatest pleasure, grounding the harmony and rendering Bach’s form dynamic. About Anders Hillborg’s ‘new’ second movement, the less said the better. On a slow day, it might, I suppose, have taken five minutes to jot down. The third movement (Bach’s, thank God) was very fast yet not unreasonably so; something of Bach’s spirit and humanity remained. Hillborg’s Bach Materia opened intriguingly, out of the orchestra’s tuning up. Alas, it was all downhill thereafter. The music moved into vaguely minimalist churning out of violin arpeggios from soloist Pekka Kuusisto, offered ‘effects’ aplenty, from silly chirping noises to shouted interjections as Kuusisto and double bass player Sebastien Dubé improvised. The collaboration showed Dubé to better advantage than Kuusisto. Should unpleasant wailing be your thing, however, there was some of that too. Again, the sense was of filling in time that really had no need to be filled in. When bits of Bach returned, there was some enjoyment to be had, soon not so much dashed as dissipated. Attempts to be ‘right on’ rarely prove edifying; this, frankly, was just a mess.

The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was for me the unquestioned highlight of the first concert and indeed of the Bach performances as a whole. Here, it seemed, the soloists, especially Esfahani, took the lead rather than Dausgaard and turned what they were doing into a performance in the living, emphatic sense. The first movement was lively and breathed, its contours and formal dynamism not only apparent but felt, experienced. Esfahani’s way with the cadenza not only impressed, but reminded us what astounding music this is. It would be foolish to imitate Furtwängler, even on the piano, but his incredible recorded 1950 performance from Salzburg remains the model here. Esfahani proved a worthy successor. The second movement was true Kammermusik: flexible, beautifully balanced, with all the give and take one might have hoped for between harpsichord, flute (Fiona Kelly), and especially violin (Antje Weithaas). Bach’s closing Allegro danced with far greater ease than any of those aforementioned self-conscious ‘Baroque Dance Lessons’ and, naturally, went far deeper. These were not soloists who, again to borrow from Adorno, said Bach yet meant Telemann. Its contrapuntal complexity was embraced; that complexity embraced both performers and audience in return. It was perhaps a little puzzling not to have a ‘response’ that involved the harpsichord, but Uri Caine’s Hamsa was doubtless written with himself in mind as piano soloist. There is no doubting the quality of his pianism; his tone was often to die for. Hamsa, named after the Arabic word for ‘five’, seemed to me sincere and ambitious. It certainly confronted Bach in quotation, allusion, and, in its way, vaguely neo-Classical procedure. Again, it seemed far too long for its material, whose treatment began to sound merely arbitrary. Perhaps I simply did not ‘get’ Caine’s aesthetic. There was certainly no gainsaying the quality of the performances here.

Bach remained, of course, and endured into the second concert. The Fourth Brandenburg Concerto reverted somewhat to the more tentative or at least constricted ‘early-ish’ style of the First and Third, at least so far as the orchestra and Kuusisto were concerned. Per Gross and Katarina Widell on recorders, however, offered infectious enthusiasm. Dausgaard seemed overly keen to mould the central Andante; its fussiness continued into the finale, which alas, had something of that ‘This is a Baroque Dance’ quality to it. A somewhat disappointing performance, then, prefaced Olga Neuwirth’s brilliant Aello – ballet mécanomorphe, to my ears by far the strongest of the new works. In three movements, like its companion, it immediately spoke with the tones – in every sense – of a serious composer at work. Figures remembered from Bach, whether melodic, rhythmic, or both, sounded as if trapped in a machine. Or were they actually perfectly happy to be there? Claire Chase on flute, shadowed by two muted trumpets, offered breathtaking virtuosity, set against an ever-changing ensemble that included synthesised harpsichord and glass harmonica as well as portable typewriter. Machines can be fun as well as serious – indeed sometimes especially when they are serious. So too can Bach. An almost Berio-like malaise, material dragged down into something mysteriously different yet related, led, toward the end of the first movement, into a reinvention of Bach and Neuwirth in almost jazzy style (all the more convincing for making no claims to be jazz ‘itself’). The glass harmonica soundworld of the second movement, however ‘artificial’ – what art, by definition, is not? – seemed to incite more ‘traditional’, arabesque-like flute writing which yet did not lose its ‘mechanical’ edge. Jesting with form – or perhaps simply my lack of understanding! – had me think for a while we were embarked upon a transition to a finale in which Bach would reassert himself, only to realise that ‘transition’ had been the finale along. I very much look forward to hearing it again.

Brett Dean’s Approach – Prelude to a Canon was written to preface the Sixth Concerto. Its opening busy counterpoint seemed to evoke, in melody and harmony, a Bach who may or may not have been ‘real’. Different moods, never predictable, whether ludic or songful, prevailed at different times, sometimes suggesting a more ‘modern’ conception of double concerto for the composer and fellow violist, Tabea Zimmermann, sometimes very much a reinvention of Bach’s own terms. Emotional and intellectual tension was often coincident; when not, the disparity proved equally suggestive. If I responded more strongly to Neuwirth’s piece, there was no doubting the accomplishment of Dean’s either. Bach emerged from its final bars. Again, my ears had been tricked; I had expected another section of Dean. This is a very difficult work to bring off. However, if I found the first movement unreasonably fast, Bach’s dark colours nevertheless shone through (or whatever the more appropriate verb for darkness here would be). The outer movements benefited from being Dean and Zimmermann taking the lead as soloists; the central Adagio ma non tanto seemed less certain in direction.

Bach bade farewell with his Second Brandenburg Concerto. It was hard-driven and light-textured in the now fashionable way. Nevertheless, balance came across very well: no mean feat in this of all works. Perhaps the highlight was the central Andante: not, I hasten to add, because the excellent Håkan Hardeberger was not playing, but because it flowed more freely, again taken as chamber music. I am afraid I could not get on with the machine-like approach to the finale. Even Stravinsky, I imagined, might have asked Dausgaard and company to calm down a little. That said, it helped pave the way for Steven Mackey’s Triceros, which followed without a break, a held trumpet note for transition. Its initial (post-)minimalism passed amiably enough. It certainly came across in polished, even accomplished fashion when contrasted with the offerings by Turnage and Hillsborg. Again, the aesthetic is one to which I find it difficult to respond, so I shall not say too much, other than again to say that it could have done with being half, even a third of the length. Note-spinning may have been the way of many a sub-Telemann composer; it was never Bach’s. Bach, however, remained – and always will.