BPO/Thielemann - Beethoven, Missa solemnis, 14 December 2017

Philharmonie

Mass in D major, op.123 (Missa solemnis)

Luba Orgonášová (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano)

Daniel Behle (tenor)

Franz-Josef Selig (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

There are musical works at which, in awe, one strain’s one’s aural neck – and then there is the Missa solemnis (no need, just like the Ninth Symphony, to say whose). It has its detractors; so does Fidelio. However, their accusations, in both cases, seem founded on gross misunderstandings of what Beethoven was doing. Ultimately, they perhaps even add to the works’ stature: almost unquestionably so, I think, in the case of the Missa solemnis. Its extreme difficulty is both the point and not the point. As with all late Beethoven, indeed pretty much all Beethoven, dialectics ensure that difficulty and simplicity, rupture and wholeness, so on and so forth, are not just banally ‘connected’, but inconceivable, conceptually let alone performatively, with one another.

Performance: there’s the rub, or perhaps the greatest rub. I have noticed that, with many honourable exceptions, it is singers who are most likely to condemn those works of Beethoven that include voices. (It is surely an error to name them ‘vocal works’, a mistake that gets close to the heart of the matter.) If you want concessions, to your personal taste, to your ease of performance or listening, concessions to anything really: Beethoven could hardly be less your man. It is not ‘about you’, as the modern slogan has it. And yes, I know very well that I am drawing upon, thinking and writing within, the Romantic myth of Beethoven, of the towering, glowering genius. Such knowledge, whether we like it or no, is the essence of our modern and/or post-modern predicament. Guess what, though? The myth happens to be true. The enigmatic quality and the extreme difficulty are integral to the work; in the complexity of its attempted, impossible mediation between subject and object, they are, just as in Hegel (well, more or less ‘just as’), doing the work of Geist (Spirit), of God, of history, of whatever we want to call it, or It. Calling the Missa solemnis a ‘concert work’ is at best misleading, despite its actual – as opposed to envisaged – performance history. It is not only a sacred work, but a resanctification of, through serious reckoning with, the Mass itself – and not only its text. Reactionaries will not like that, but so what? Nor does Geist.


Performance, however, is not, as it were, the only rub. The business of aesthetics, of reflection upon art, almost immediately, even immanently, arises with this work. Such is modernity – and is this not most likely Beethoven’s most modern work of all? I have long entertained the fantasy – and who knows: sometimes fantasies are realised – that the Missa solemnis in particular and perhaps Beethoven in general would be my retirement job. (Let us leave aside the sad reflection that retirement itself will doubtless remain a mere fantasy for those of us betrayed and destroyed by the ‘Brexit’ generation.) I certainly do not feel remotely prepared to tackle it yet. In that respect, I both take heart and become ever more fearful from Furtwängler’s decision no longer to perform it. Like Beethoven himself – and surely we ought to afford his view a little respect, Wellington’s Victory notwithstanding – Furtwängler thought it Beethoven’s single greatest work, yet considered its challenges too great for him or indeed anyone else ever to be able to realise. And if Furtwängler, surely the greatest recorded Beethovenian of all, thought so…

Furtwängler’s view has overwhelmingly, tragically, been proved correct. I cannot, of course, claim to know all recorded performances of the Missa solemnis, let alone all other performances. Of the recordings as such (as opposed to performances that have survived on recording) only Klemperer’s 1966 version for me really confronts its challenges head on and emerges with credit. (One can hardly say ‘surmounts’ them; no one surmounts Beethoven’s challenges, or if (s)he does, that is perhaps the most lamentable fate of all.) And, perhaps perversely, although I should like to think in some sense dialectically – well I would, wouldn’t I? – I had, before this performance from Christian Thielemann and Berlin forces, attended only one performance in the concert hall. True, they do not necessarily come along so very often, but nor are they so rare as that might imply. I had not wanted to risk a mediocre, let alone a poor, performance: bad enough in symphonic Beethoven – what is more soul-destroying than thinking ‘pointless’ and-or ‘meaningless’ to a performance of the Fifth Symphony? – but somehow even worse here, for it might end up sounding like what its detractors think it does. I had chosen my single performance well: Colin Davis, shortly before his death, and with mortality seemingly, even at the time, hanging over Beethoven’s grand reckoning not only with the Mass but with God Himself. It was a performance I shall never forget – and again, like Klemperer, that is part of the problem for whatever comes after. It may, it would seem, also be (re)listened to on YouTube, but I have never felt the desire to try – and doubtless to fail – to repeat an unrepeatable experience. (Indeed, although I have offered a link to the review, I do not yet even wish to re-read it.) And the thoughts it gave rise to, seemingly spanning the entirety of musical and theological history, or doubtless I flatter myself…

Apologies for having spent so long, relatively speaking, concerning my own thoughts, or attempts at thoughts, about the work rather than the performance. (Believe me, I could have gone on for much, much longer; I almost thought myself retired.) They seemed necessary, though, not even merely advisable, to explain how I heard Thielemann’s performance – or perhaps, to those who gained far more from it, how I did not hear it. Or perhaps I too was avoiding a confrontation. It seems somehow almost unforgivably banal to move to saying ‘it had much to admire, yet…’. And yet, that is what I must do; for, despite many very real virtues, the sheer excellence of all performing forces the greatest among them, I was left almost entirely cold. Was that another turn, as it were, of the Adornian dialectical screw? I thought I had truly grasped the work, however fleetingly, and then had not? Maybe a little, but not really, I think.

Thielemann clearly knew the work, or the notes, and what he wanted from it, or them. He was conducting from memory. Moreover, he clearly knew exactly how to get what he wanted from those uniformly excellent performers. Any criticisms I shall make are in no sense criticisms of them. One might have thought that a musician who, not unaggressively, positions himself as a standard bearer of the great German tradition would have been in a good position to communicate the mysteries of this work. There is, of course, no single tradition, though. And whilst I have in the past admired Thielemann’s Beethoven greatly – his recordings with the Philharmonia, for instance – his more recent Beethoven, still more so his Wagner, seems to have been filtered through a materialist conception that might work for Strauss, and often does work for him, magnificently, but which cannot really cope with the meaning(s) of works by Beethoven and Wagner. We can certainly applaud the need not to say the same thing over and over again, or indeed merely to imitate the past; but that does not mean that an alternative, simply by virtue of being an alternative, has any of the answers.

The full, warm sound of the Berlin Philharmonic at the opening of the Kyrie augured well: not entirely unlike Thielemann’s Philharmonia Beethoven; perhaps also with a certain kinship to the Klang of Leonard Bernstein’s Concertgebouw recording; not much at all in common with the sound of any of Herbert von Karajan’s intriguing multiple attempts at reckoning with the work (see, for instance, here and here), although perhaps at another level – deeper or shallower? perhaps both? – not so distant conceptually from Karajan’s approach. Militant authenticists would not have liked it, but who cares? And the bounds of the movement – perhaps the only one that has recognisable bounds – were well chosen; I was put in mind of an observation from Joseph Kerman to the effect that this was the only part of Beethoven’s setting that had no hyperbole. (I cannot recall his precise words, and do not have them here with me to check, so I hope that I shall be forgiven for distortion, misattribution, or even downright invention!) Moreover, whilst, from observing Thielemann, one might have feared an overly moulded performance, it did not – at least not here – sound like one. And if one had a problem with what it looked like, one could also, as with Bernstein, close one’s eyes. (Even Karajan did not, of course, do that for works with chorus when conducting them.) There was, moreover, a fine sense of a ‘natural’ – however constructed that might have been – tread to the movement’s progress. Beethoven, quite rightly, was not to be hurried; nor was he to be static. Individual soloists versus the ‘mass’ of the chorus sounded in balance, and dramatically rather than banally so. It did not ‘sound like’ Haydn, but perhaps still belonged in a similar conception to his. Beethoven as (sort of) Haydn? That is hardly unreasonable, especially here.

The rest of the Mass does not, of course, and rarely if ever did Thielemann seem quite to know – not that I think he was not trying – to portray, to dramatise that. The breakneck speed of the opening of the Gloria was surely an attempt, far from unreasonable, to do that – but what does reason, at least Enlightenment reason, have to do with this work? Superlative playing from the orchestra and superlative singing from the chorus impressed, as did the extraordinary clarity of what one heard: bassoons beneath the chorus, for instance. It ‘worked’, I think, but something was missing. The beating Larghetto heart of the movement arguably did not, Thielemann seemingly struggling to establish a basic pulse, although the woodwind solos predictably ravished in a materialist fashion. Even once the pulse had settled, though, it all sounded a little too glamorous. There was, though, a welcome sense of decision to follow: there can be no argument with either Beethoven or Whoever Stands Above Him; or alternatively, there can, but it will fail. Such good work, very sadly, was largely undone by a preposterously indulgent Luftpause before ‘in glora Dei Patris’. What might work – might – in Thielemann’s Meistersinger ‘Wach auf!’ does not work here; it came across as mere egotism. Just because you can do something, it does not follow that you should. Following that, perhaps not inappropriately in situ, came weirdly operatic ‘Amens’. Beethoven as Verdi? No thank you.

Still more is at stake in Beethoven’s Credo, both statement of and struggle to believe. Here, alas, there was far too little sense of struggle. Tension was built up admirably in the first section, very controlled, even controlling, but that is not to be disdained; we hardly want a free-for-all. It was, again, mightily impressive. ‘Et incarnatus est’ brought Palestrina, increasingly adorned, to the stage, not unlike an aural representation of a Gothic church, decorated by Rococo successors. Egotism once again, however, brought a bizarrely prolonged silence between the ‘Crucifixus’ and ‘Et resurrexit’ sections. Perhaps this is unfair, but it was almost as if Thielemann wanted to dare the audience not to fidget, or even to applaud. What followed was highly theatrical – one may argue about whether it should be, but it is not an outrageous conception – without ever conveying any real sense of theological, or other, meaning. Neutrality as opposed to neutralising tendencies doing batter with subjectivity in the material and its development? Beethoven as sewing pattern? Again, no thank you.

That tendency to draw out ‘preparations’ – not in a liturgical sense – was again to be heard in the Sanctus as we approached the ‘Pleni sunt coeli’ section. Alas, it sounded more like a trick of the trade than a reading or communication of the text. There was no gainsaying, though, the outstanding level of execution. Warmly cultivated playing from concertmaster, Daniel Stabrawa – I wish violinists would not stand as if concerto soloists for this – was greatly to be admired, but did this feel in context as if it represented, even embodied, the descent of the Holy Ghost? Oddly, the music of the ‘Benedictus’ section sounded closer than I could recall hearing before to Die Zauberflöte. Beethoven as Mozart? Well, we can argue about that.

Darkness, even if again of a somewhat materialist conception, rightly haunted the opening of the Agnus Dei. Franz-Josef Selig’s solo seemed to speak with something close to perfection of both that darkness and the humanity that might emerge de profundis. A comparison with Sarastro would be indicative, but only if it involved contrast too: there is nothing of a noble yet flawed character to the music here. (The flaws obviously, I hope, refer to Sarastro, not to Mozart!) Once more, although Thielemann often looked as if he were about to pull the music around, he did not do so unduly; indeed, the sternness with which he conducted the Berlin strings was greatly to be admired in terms of potential meaning as well as executive accomplishment. There was no doubt that we were all, worthless sinners, to be on our knees here. The longed for unambiguous major chord, when it came, was treated to what I thought of as ‘fleeting length’: not indulgent, now, but provocative in a better, productive sense. What never quite materialised, though, was the cosmic scale to the later sounds of this movement. It was as if we had returned to the world of the Kyrie; even the terror of war sounded as if heard a little too much from afar, or even as a near-visual, ‘beautiful’ representation.

I was not overwhelmed, then, either by this microcosm, or by Thielemann’s Missa cosmogony. I do not doubt, and certainly do not mean to call into question, that he had considered what he was doing. Perhaps it was just not for me. I am not sure, though, that it was for Beethoven – whatever we mean by that – either. Still, it made me think, if more afterwards than at the time. I was led to think even about what it meant not to have been made to think. And then I returned to Adorno, and with the unquestionable egotism of a mere fallen human being, to something I had written in my first book (on Wagner’s Ring), towards its close:

Adorno was quite justified to claim that serious consideration of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis – perhaps the most enduringly enigmatic musical work yet written – could only result in its Brechtian alienation, in rupturing ‘the aura of unfocused veneration protectively surrounding it’. One of the greatest problems with respect to the Ring is that such rupture has become well-nigh impossible. To be aware of this is only a beginning, but better than nothing. We should remain grateful that the enigma of the Ring pales besides that of Beethoven’s work. If we could understand why Beethoven set the Mass, we should, Adorno claimed, understand the Missa Solemnis. Understanding why Wagner wrote the Ring and beginning to understand the work itself suddenly seem less forbidding prospects.

Until, then, (impossible) retirement…

Two million visitors!

This seems quite incredible: 2 million visitors* since I began writing here in 2007. Doubtless some of were mistakes, some were spammers, etc.; a few would have been yours truly before I learned how to stop myself being counted. That must still leave a good number from others, from you – without whom this would be a still stranger form of madness. Thank you all for your loyalty, support, and in many cases friendship. This has been a truly horrendous year, heralded by the death of the man who gave this site its name, Pierre Boulez, the very conscience of New Music. Let us hope that music and thinking about music will continue to offer us some sort of solace and provocation. We shall need it.

But no gloom just for a minute: thank you! Please listen...

* I am informed I should have said 'page views', which actually seems a reasonable correction (not least since that is what the sign actually says!) You see how clueless I am about such things...

'Baroque' choral music: a few recording recommendations

Over on Twitter, someone I follow was seeking recommendations for a recording of Bach's Mass in B minor. Klemperer I offered without a moment's thought as a first choice, with Richter (in any guise) and Jochum (ditto) as alternatives. Not long after, one of my followers tweeted to say how much he had enjoyed listening to Klemperer, and asked if I might offer some more recording suggestions on here from time to time. Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to leave that until a time when I am less manically busy - the beginning of term, indeed pretty much all of term, tending to be less than ideal - but then I am not sure that any time is particularly relaxed, and work tends to expand to fit the time available. Here, anyway, are a few favourites from Baroque and Classical choral music, since the Bach question had me thinking about that repertoire. I have limited myself to one recommendation per work, with two exceptions, which will be explained or at least argued. (Bach's cantatas are a different matter again, since we are mostly dealing with selections.) I certainly do not expect everyone, or indeed anyone, to agree, but I hope that some of these favourites might be useful. Where possible, I have included links to Amazon, which might be helpful to those seeking to explore the recordings.

Monteverdi - Vespro della beate Virgine

Certainly not the earliest great choral work - in a sense it comes at the very end of the greatest era for choral music - but perhaps the first great concerted choral 'blockbuster'. To my mind, at any rate, it is the greatest single choral 'work' - a moot term in this context, I realise - before Bach. Ranging in style from the polyphony of Monteverdi's Renaissance forebears to the madrigalian and operatic sensuality he was furthering and forging, it really has something for everyone. I have adored it since studying it as one of my set works for A-level music. Well represented in the recording catalogue, to my ears it is perhaps on balance still best heard in John Eliot Gardiner's first recording, for Decca. Modern instruments are still employed, though Gardiner would soon forsake them, and the vocal soloists are a starrier bunch, though not inappropriately so, than on his subsequent recording. This Decca bargain also includes a number of other works by Monteverdi and his Venetian contemporaries.



Schütz - Geistliche Chormusik 1648

If not quite the acorn from which the great tree of German music grew, there is enough truth in that - just as there is in Haydn as the 'father of the symphony' - to perpetuate the myth a little longer. Heinrich Schütz not only brought the fruits of Venetian music (from his teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli) to Germany; he not only proved instrumental, if the pun be forgiven, in the founding of what we know as the Staatskapelle Dresden; he also wrote the greatest German choral music before Bach. This 1648 collection is as all-encompassing in its way, more modest but no less profound, as its Monteverdian predecessor.



Carissimi - Jephte

Regularly cited in the history books as an exemplar of the mid-seventeenth-century oratorio, this is a highly dramatic work, telling the Book of Judges story of Jephtha. This 2-CD set offers a variety of equally ravishing works by Giovanni Carissimi.



Purcell - Verse Anthems
No composer, not even Britten, has been quite so at ease, quite so idiomatic, with respect to English word-setting as Purcell. Add to that his gorgeous harmonies, a melodic gift that at times seems almost to presage Mozart, Purcell's fusion of Continental and English styles, and that melancholy which one struggles not to think of in a sense as 'English', and we have the English Orpheus, Henry Purcell. This beautifully sung album includes not only a fine selection of verse anthems - a form now indelibly associated with Purcell - but also other choral works such as the splendid Te Deum and the unforgettable Funeral Sentences, as Anglican in the very best sense as the Book of Common Prayer itself.



Bach - Mass in B minor

Klemperer, as I said earlier, remains, at least in many moods, the ultimate first-choice in a fiercely contested field. There is not the slightest trace of Romanticism to his typically craggy, monumental performance; not that there is anything wrong with Romanticism, but it is not Klemperer's Neue Sachlichkeit way. If one wanted to define musical integrity, one could do worse than start with this and Klemperer's Missa solemnis.



Bach, St John Passion

Eugen Jochum's more Romantic way with Bach - sadly, an envisaged Klemperer St John was never to be - pays particular dividends in this, the more vivdly 'dramatic', at least as the term is conventionally understood, of Bach's Passions. For drama as searing as Tristan and indeed as erotic, come here. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are without exception superlative.



Bach, St Matthew Passion

I said, go to the St John Passion for drama as searing as Tristan and indeed as erotic; for drama that surpasses even Wagner in both respects, the St Matthew Passion beckons: to my mind, the single greatest work of art in existence. For a dramatic experience words cannot begin to describe, Willem Mengelberg's legendary 1939 Palm Sunday performance cannot be approached. The opening chorus tells us all we need to know about what is at stake; at least until we continue to listen. Sadly, no tragically, it is cut, which is why I offer the alternative of Klemperer's great tableau: a ritual dance of death so involving that it, equally, will change you for ever. Comparisons are utterly odious here in any case; every human being needs to hear both. Often, but not too often, for a world in which the St Matthew Passion may be heard on tap begs more questions than it answers.

 

Bach - Christmas Oratorio

This extraordinary set of six cantatas for the Christmas season, infinitely more 'seasonal' than Handel's Lenten Messiah, is perhaps best heard in the recording by that great Bachian, Karl Richter. Richter's Lutheran understanding informed all his Bach, but little, if any, is greater than this joyous performance. 'Stellar' hardly begins to describe the soloists.



Bach - Magnificat in D major

This Magnificat also exists in 'Christmas' form, in E-flat major, but for 'everyday' usage, not that Bach should ever be relegated to the status of Gebrauchsmusik, the D major version is the one to hear. Once again, Richter is impossible to beat, and may not be equalled. Even Haydn is not more joyous than this.



Bach - Cantatas

The greatest treasure trove of all, from which many works seem to have been lost forever. (And to think what some musicologists fret over!) One might miss other music; one certainly would; however, it would be perfectly possible to live happily on this spiritual bread alone. Haydn's symphonies are perhaps the only point of comparison, but we shall leave them for another day. Richter's set of one cantata for every Sunday and major feast should be a cornerstone of every collection. (However at the price currently being charged, you may be well advised to wait, or at least to assemble from the individual five volumes!) Would that he had been permitted to record every cantata. As a taster - relatively speaking - there is also the set of Advent cantatas, which might be added to as required. Ultimately, one has to hear every one, in which case my recommendation would be Helmuth Rilling's set. But many of the cantatas are best heard on individual recordings, of which a few are offered below. Perhaps this is something I should return to in greater detail, but rest assured that any of these recordings will truly change your life. 'Vocal' might be a better description than 'choral' for much of this music, but let us not split hairs.



Handel - Messiah

For the moment, at least, I shall tear myself away from Bach and turn to his great contemporary, Handel. Messiah remains, of course, his most celebrated, most loved, work, and there is nothing wrong with that, however atypical it might be of his oratorios. Beecham here is hors concours, but for those who cannot take the Beecham-Goossens reorchestration - and they will be missing out on a great deal - Sir Colin Davis is an unanswerable 'straight', and relatively small-scale, recommendation.




Handel - Saul

When I first heard Saul, I thought it the greatest music-drama in the English language. I have since heard Dido and Aeneas and The Mask of Orpheus, but Saul remains, at the very least, a great drama, far more typical of Handelian oratorio than the more celebrated Messiah. Handel's dramatic genius was never greater than in his construction of the character of Saul, flawed, tragic, yet ultimately understandable to us all. And the choral writing is superlative. Sir Charles Mackerras did nothing finer than this; one can picture the action through listening alone.



Handel - Israel in Egypt

This, again, is not typical, but Handel's choral writing does not come any more glorious than Israel in Egypt, double choruses and all. The grandeur that is all too often lacking from modern-day Handel performances is still captured in Simon Preston's recording, despite the relatively small forces: a lesson to us all.



Handel - Theodora

Handel's two final oratorios, Theodora and Jephtha are perhaps more moving than anything else he wrote. So as to try to keep this entry within reasonable bounds, I shall limit myself to Theodora here. (Arbitrary, I know, but there is plenty of material for a second piece, and doubtless for more than that.) This tale of early-Christian martyrdom never fails to move in Johannes Somary's recording, blessed by a cast including Heather Harper and Maureen Forrester.



That is all for now. However, as I said, there may well be a further instalment or two, or I may venture forth into any other period or genre.

Soli Deo gloria!

Prom 12: WEDO/Barenboim (3) - Beethoven and Boulez, 23 July 2012

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven – Symphony no.6 in F major, op.68, ‘Pastoral’
Boulez – memoriale (...explosante-fixe... originel)
Boulez – Messagesquisse
Beethoven – Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Guy Eshed (flute)
Hassan Moataz El Molla (cello)
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)


The Barenboim/West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Beethoven-Boulez series goes from strength to strength. There will doubtless be someone who begs to differ, but I find it difficult to imagine that anyone in the Royal Albert Hall could have failed to register this as a truly great musical experience – and more than or equal to that, a great experience of the human spirit. Beethoven seems well-nigh impossible for our age to comprehend, or at least to express, which is why we need him all the more. Alas, and not solely on account of the ‘period’ revolution, though that has a great deal to answer for, too many musicians – one would be too many! – seem to have lost any conception of what is required. Daniel Barenboim has not; nor has his inspirational band of young musicians.

There is never a single, ‘correct’ tempo for a piece – though there are of course exceptional works such as Stockhausen’s Gruppen which depend upon intricate tempo relationships – any more than there is a single, ‘correct’ interpretation of a musical work. That said, Barenboim’s account of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony, indeed of the symphony as a whole, sounded just right. I dread to think at what breakneck speed our authenticist friends would harry Beethoven here, still more how they would refuse to let the music breathe. Whilst I never have the slightest idea, nor interest, in timings as such, Barenboim sounded to me very much in what once would have been the mainstream. Karl Böhm, in his mangificent Vienna Philharmonic recording, might have been a little slower; Carlos Kleiber was probably quicker. The crucial thing was that harmonic rhythm was understood and communicated. And what a cultivated sound the Divan offered; at times, this almost seemed as if it were a Beethoven string quartet writ large. It should go without saying that the development section sounded developmental and that the recapitulation offered a sense of return; alas, in the light of so many recent performances, it is worthy of note – and is of course far easier said than done. The slow movement was utterly beguiling yet equally underpinned by inexorable forward momentum. There is nothing worse here – and this has nothing to do with metronome markings – than the music overstaying its welcome. I almost wished to hear it again.   It now seems so obvious, but I do not think I had previously appreciated how much Beethoven’s ‘tone-painting’ here actually owes to the rather different example of Mozart’s divertimenti. Trust a great Mozartian such as Barenboim to highlight the connection, which could never have been achieved, however, without the ravishing playing of his musicians. The scherzo’s rusticity looked back to Haydn and forward to countless Romantics; above all, it sang and stomped with Beethovenian vigour, which is never, as Barenboim understands, something to be applied from without, but which must come from the telos of the music. Though the storm also sacked nothing either in vigour, its rigour was of a similarly musical nature. By all means imagine whatever country scenes you wish in your head; the music and its performance stand and fall upon their own strengths. Warmth, fulfilment, thanksgiving: all are certainly terms one might employ in discussion of the finale, but again, a Klemperer-like inevitability underpinned their expression or suggestion.

Guy Eshed was the soloist for the ensemble performance that followed. Boulez’s memoriale, at least in this context, provided another, perhaps more surprising, link to the Mozartian divertimento tradition, though anyone who knows the composer’s relatively recent recording of the Gran Partita will know not to be very surprised. This was delectable playing from all concerned, and if the piece itself would prove not only memorial but new beginning (on the path to ...explosante-fixe...), here it offered, if not light relief, then delicious contrast.  Just as in a previous Proms performance from these musicians, Boulezian open-endedness was an abiding impression, an oblique response perhaps to Beethovenian finality?

Messaagesquisse followed: an exciting prospect, given the fine performance I had heard Hassan Moataz El Molla and colleagues from the WEDO give, under Barenboim’s direction, in Berlin a couple of years ago, for the composer’s eighty-fifth birthday. Unfortunately, and I put it mildly, the hall had neglected to inform at least a good number of us – it seems that there were inserts in some programmes, though not others, and no announcement was made – that the interval would come after rather than before the performance. Along with many around me, I sauntered outside for a breath of fresh air, was informed by an usher that the interval would last for twenty minutes – yes, I even asked! – only to find upon my return to the hall, the cellist receiving applause from a significantly reduced audience. Why ever was an announcement not made and/or a notice displayed, and why ever did the staff not inform those of us leaving? Still, it was heart-warming to note on returning home a little postscript to the relevant page on the Proms website: ‘Please note: For technical reasons, it has been necessary to move the position of tonight's interval, which will now occur after Pierre Boulez's Messagesquisse.’ I hope that those listeners at home who would otherwise have reached for the kettle would not have suffered the same fate as many of us paying customers in the hall. Here, below, is a video clip of the Berlin performance I heard.

After the interval proper came Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I had doubtless been unlucky, but I had never heard in the concert hall a performance I thought worthy of the work, or indeed of the great recorded performances of the past. Now, for the first time, I did. Interestingly, given that a reader quizzed me only a day or so ago about why I rarely mentioned Klemperer’s influence upon Barenboim, I felt that more strongly than I had usually done in the first movement. No one would be able to recreate the very specific circumstances of desperation and defiance to be heard in Furtwängler’s legendary 1943 recording.

Barenboim wisely did not try. But there was to be heard throughout this still incredibly concise movement – Webern must surely have loved it! – something of the implacability, the inexorability, the impossibility of compromise, almost synonymous with Klemperer, one of Barenboim’s greatest mentors. The opening bars knocked one for six, yet did not stand out like a sore thumb, nor indeed at all; they opened, and the music, in the best sense rather than that more generally current, never relented. There was defiance too in the slow movement, its processional status – another nod, or more, to the French Revolution – readily apparent, readily felt. If there were repose at all, it was of the most limited order. Tonal restlessness continually undermined any such temptations, for the battle was far from won. The scherzo offered plenty of opportunity, well taken, for Barenboim’s musicians to shine: one could sense, even without seeing, how well they had been taught to listen to each other. Yet of course this was not a case simply of chamber music on a grander scale – a problem with some of Claudio Abbado’s more recent performances, when it comes to music for which the idea simply is not apposite – for it required, and received, the surety of Barenboim’s guiding hand. (Special mention must be made of the double basses in the trio, digging so deep, so rich, that there could be no doubt that this music meant something, even if that something could never be put into words.) The transition from the ghostly reprise of the scherzo – here, rightly played above all with musical meaning rather than as a strange ‘effect’ – into the finale is surely one of the most extraordinary in all music. Barenboim and the orchestra showed that it need not fall flat in performance, as so often it does; indeed, they showed that Beethoven can still storm, perhaps open, the portals of heaven. In a mediocre performance, the predominance of tonic and dominant harmony can almost become tedious. On this occasion, there was no doubting the optimistic, humanistic blazing of glory that Beethoven offers and our age more often than not seems able only to decline, or at least to snipe at. Having the piccolo player stand looked a little odd, but it enabled us to hear her part properly, and to appreciate what miniature invention lies therein. For the coda acted, as it must, as a release for all the tension built up throughout the symphony. We might still have questions at the end; our historical predicament doubtless makes it inevitable. Yet somehow, this music can still, just, offer us hope. I have no idea how this performance will sound as a recorded memento in the cold light of day. But who needs the cold light of day? Certainly not Beethoven.

What we have lost: Bach's St Matthew Passion rendered unperformable?

A recent, very costly, mishap was to leave my iPod on an aeroplane. Sad to say, it was never found. Since it has become an essential working tool, quite apart from being a comfort upon otherwise unbearably crowded railway carriages, I had to bite the bullet and buy another. Memory constraints meant that I had very little music stored on my computer - I shall have to find a way of rectifying that - so I have slowly but surely been selecting recordings and importing them. In most but not all cases, I have tried to stick to one recording per work, which has involved making interesting but difficult choices. Which versions of the Mahler symphonies? I actually managed to stick to one each: for the moment... Which versions of the Beethoven symphonies? In certain cases, I did not manage to stick to one each... As for the greatest musical work of all, and I tend to think the greatest work of art bar none, Bach's St Matthew Passion, I simply could not choose between various performances, all of which, tellingly, were of a certain vintage or older. Below are the opening choruses, which I have found available on Youtube. How can we have allowed this monumental, shattering chorus to be reduced to an out-of-tune, meaningless dance? Do present-day performers never even read the words? And it is not simply a matter of period instruments. Riccardo Chailly, when I heard him conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, took this very chorus at an unyielding, breakneck tempo I should have found obscene, had I not been near-anaesthetised by my astonishment. Listen, by contrast, to the tempo variations introduced by Willem Mengelberg in his Palm Sunday performance from 1939 (there are a date and place to conjure with...), not at all arbitrary, but responding to the text in what remains perhaps the most vividly dramatic reading of all:



Or to Otto Klemperer, whose magisterial, terrifying, yet plain-spoken pageant does not rely upon such adjustments, but which proves every bit as responsive to words and music:



Or to Wilhelm Furtwängler's seething, searing, metaphysical drama, not only presaging but perhaps going beyond Tristan und Isolde:



Or, finally, to Karl Richter, whose conception is so clearly, overwhelmingly founded in a profound theological understanding of the work:



And then think of what we must endure today. As Theodor Adorno, writing in the aftermath of the Bach anniversary year 1950, unforgettably put it, 'Bach's devotees' might 'say Bach,' but they 'mean Telemann'. The situation is if anything even worse today, for the devotees no longer seem even to mean Telemann, preferring a bizarre freak-show to would-be restoration of the merely generic German Baroque. Now, more than ever, we need to recognise, in Adorno's words again, that 'the difference between what is past and what is present … is not absolute. One can only understand Schoenberg if one understands Bach; one can only understand Bach if one understands Schoenberg.' And, indeed, to say the same of subsequent composers. Thank goodness, then, for recordings...

For more on Adorno, Furtwängler, and Bach, and some of the unsavoury roots of the 'authentic' movement, click here.