Salzburg Festival (7) - Three Sisters, 24 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Irina – Dennis Orellana
Masha – Cameron Shahbazi
Natasha – Kangmin Justin Kim
Tuzenbach – Mikołaj Trąbka
Vershinin – Ivan Ludlow
Andrei – Jacques Imbrailo
Kulygin – Andrei Valentiy
Anfisa – Aleksander Teliga
Solyony – Anthony Robin Schneider
Doctor – Jörg Schneider
Rode – Seiyoung Kim
Fedotik – Kristofer Lundin
Mother – Eva Christine Just
Protopopov – Henry Diaz
Girl – Johanna Lehfeldt

Director – Evgeny Titov
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Emma Ryott
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Sound design – Paul Jeukendrup
Dramaturgy – Christian Arseni  

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus
Masha (Cameron Shahbazi), Solyony (Anthony Robin Schneider), Vershinin (Ivan Ludlow)

Chekhov operas are distinctly thin on the ground. I am not sure that is a bad thing. Adaptations that end up being little more – at least dramatically – than abridgements with music are rarely the most convincing of operas. There are splendid cases of plays more or less set to music and thereby transformed, but they are not especially common—and with good reason. Whatever one might say of Pelléas et Mélisande, it is an exceedingly uncommon work (with apologies to Mr Kipling). Some transformations much more than that, of course, yet remain strangely misunderstood. I cannot help but think, one year on from his death, of Alexander Goehr’s Brechtian reworking of King Lear, Promised End. Yet cases in which a work is truly rethought as a musical drama are fewer than one might hope for. Peter Eötvös’s first opera Three Sisters (Три сестры/Tri Sestry) triumphantly succeeds in that respect and in others, not only ‘in itself’ as a work but also in this estimable Salzburg production, a fine cast and Klangforum Wien conducted by Maxime Pascal (and Alphonse Cemin offstage) and directed by Evgeny Titov. 

I was interested to learn after the event that librettist and dramaturge Claus H. Henneberg had initially presented Eötvös with ‘a pared-down version … able to offer us an overview of the play’s dense content in just a few dozen pages’. It was, Eötvös went on, ‘a respectable piece of work. But as I read it, I realised that this was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted. His endeavours to abridge Chekhov’s play had robbed it of all his drama. The subtle tensions between its characters had been completely lost. The drama had become empty.’ To the great credit of both composer and librettist, they started again, Henneberg affording Eötvös ‘complete freedom to change any aspect of his libretto at my own discretion, even if it meant writing a completely new text for the work I wanted to compose.’ That is what happened with ‘an utterly different approach’ that instead focused on different ‘sequences’ of events in the play, organised around three of the characters, Irina, Andrei, and Masha. It worked – and works – both as a drama in itself and indeed as a metadrama on the original Three Sisters, without ever falling into the trap of mostly being the latter. How so? Partly through skilful re-adaptation by Henneberg; partly through the drama’s coming into being as a musical drama, music integral to the text just as it would be in Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Berg, or any other opera composer worthy of the name; and partly, of course, through staging and performance. Ultimately faithful to Chekhov through infidelity, the adaptation presents human relationships, missed opportunities, their detail, and their sadness, reimagined with great power and humanity, in and through the bleakness. 

Olga (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen), Masha, Irina (Dennis Orellana)

Indeed, the opening Prologue impressed upon us not only the bleakness – though it did, in ineffably ‘Russian’ sound – but also the way suffering becomes memory, as the three sisters (not, be it noted, identical to the persons of the ensuing three Sequences) imagined themselves about, once more, to start again. There was an unmistakeably – if impossible to define – ‘Russian’ sound, both from the musicians in the pit and from the offstage orchestra. It complemented, was complemented by, and seemed almost to be in a state of co-creation with the memories turned to Felsenreitschule stone of Rufus Didwiszus’s set designs, as well as what we heard. And in one important sense, despite it all, this was a starting point, for the opera, as we moved first to Irina, the Baron, the fire and so on, leaving that first sequence with the Baron’s death—thus returning us to where we started, undermining it, and preparing the way for a different sequence. Triangular relationships – for Eötvös, the ‘primary construct’ for play and opera alike’ – characterise what we see and hear, transforming before us, but also offering a foundation for the composer’s dramaturgically generative use of triadic harmonies, ‘constantly changing … internal structure’. A post-Webern world of intervallic construction, even constructivism, merges with a sort of modern (in some ways, even pre-modern) world of Affekt, whilst instrumentation mirrors and contributes to characterisation: Olga ‘represented’ – to use Eötvös’s own term – by flute, Irina by oboe, Masha by clarinet, and Andrei by bassoon; likewise their spouses, in variants of those instrumental timbres, Natasha, for instance by saxophone, related to, yet perhaps mocking or holding in outrage Andrei’s essence. ‘Representation’ is not a static matter, of course; one follows their instrumental lines just as one does their words, vocal lines, and gestures. That is the performing text—and it is far from a reduction. 

The element of Japanese theatre often strong in Eötvös’s music, overtly dramatic or otherwise, is also pervasive here, not least in the use of male singers for all parts. Eötvös settled on the idea having originally intended to cast conventionally, then deciding to have all roles sung by women, an option rejected since he thought it would ‘come across as fetishism’. Here, the very different vocal qualities of the different counter-tenors, nonetheless retaining adherence to a certain vocal type that can suggest abstraction, felt as if it were performing a role not entirely dissimilar to use of masks. (Eötvös wrote the three sisters’ parts so they could be sung by men or women, but had his preference for male singers confirmed by experience.) Titov’s staging took a different route, rubble and memory all around, highly ‘dramatic’ in a more conventional Western sense, yet also alert to moments of humour, crisis, and much else. Indeed, homing in on the expressive and dramatic content of particular aspects of the sequences fulfilled a quasi-musical role of its own. There was something deeply moving, for instance, to Andrei’s difficult emergence from his fat suit, like a butterfly from its (in this case cruelly imposed) chrysalis, albeit shorn of hope at either end. Olga’s celebrated observation that her brother had grown fat and slothful had marked him until now (in his sequence, if not previously). Was this now an opportunity for him to sing or at least to lament freely? Yes and no. He was naked, literally and figuratively, onstage; inevitably, though, it changed nothing. We could not be in the business of happy endings. 

Kulygin (Andri Valentiy), Vershinin, Irina, Masha,
Tuzenbach (Mikołaj Trąbka), Doctor (Jörg Schneider)

None of this would have amounted to much without a set of excellent, often outstanding musical – and acted – performances. Klangforum Wien, with its two conductors, led us into a musical labyrinth that, whilst hardly Boulezian, certainly showed many points of contact, following the mini-series ‘À Pierre’, which had finished the afternoon prior to this performance. Pascal’s timing, whether of moments, sections, or the greater span of the constructed drama, had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it: both in itself and in combination with Titov’s staging. Balance, atmosphere, momentum, and magical moments of reflection all contributed to the greater whole. 

As our first ‘featured’ sister, Irina, Dennis Orellana offered a deeply sympathetic, emotionally complex reading, setting the stall, as it were, for further explorations and in fine counterpoint with Mikołaj Trąbka’s ardent Baron Tuzenbach. Cameron Shahbazi’s alluring, compelling Masha – neither quite drag-like or entirely un-drag-like – and the poignantly wise (if only up to a point) Olga of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen were equally well drawn, both in themselves and in the constantly shifting ‘triangles’ of the work. Kangmin Justin Kim’s increasingly outrageous Natasha, at one point pulling her lover Protopopov (Henry Diaz) along with a leash, was perhaps all the more monstrous, all the more hateful than in Chekhov. Jacques Imbrailo’s Andrei both deserved better and yet did not, given a reading that helped explain, rather than simply depict, his personal tragedy. Aleksander Teliga made an outsize impression as the Prozorovs’ old nurse. Ivan Ludlow’s Vershinin did much to convey a hinterland that in context could often only be suggested. All contributed to the success of a production which deserves to be seen elsewhere. Let us hope other houses will take it up, thereby proving more than a melancholic memory.

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Rossi/Kubota/BCMG/Paterson: Saunders, Anderson, Eötvös, Illean, and Birtwistle, 26 November 2024

Wigmore Hall

Rebecca Saunders: Stirrings
Julian Anderson: Mitternachtslied
Peter Eötvös: Secret Kiss (English version, world premiere)
Lisa Illean: Cantor
Harrison Birtwistle: The Woman and the Hare; …when falling asleep (London premiere)

Alice Rossi (soprano)

Meg Kubota (reciter)

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)

London visits from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are rarer than we might hope, though doubtless many would object, quite reasonably, that visits to the capital need not be its priority. At any rate, a city seemingly ever more starved of new music was here blessed by fine Wigmore Hall performances of six works from the last twenty-five years. 

‘The strokes now faint now clear as if carried by the wind but not a breath and the cries now faint now clear,’ is one of two quotations from Samuel Beckett Rebecca Saunders selected to accompany her 2011 ensemble piece, Stirrings: in this case from Beckett’s late Stirrings Still. Although the only vocal work on the programme, it seemed to set up much of what was to come, its title and perhaps not only that coming to life in the opening double bass solo and what it provoked. Nine players, most onstage, some behind us, took us on a captivating journey of extraordinary sounds that were never mere sounds, always music, ever evolving, as if this were a geological process. As before in Saunders’s work, I could have sworn I was hearing electronics, but I was not: simply nine musicians and their instruments who seemed  before our eyes and ears to have, in Gurnemanz’s vision – and Wagner’s – time become space. A sense of musical landscape already hinted at the music of Birtwistle to come, as did that of inherent musical drama. It is probably better to leave Beckett the last words, again as selected by Saunders, this time from Company: ‘Light infinitely faint it is true since now no more than a mere murmur.... In dark and silence to close as if to light the eyes and hear a sound. Some object moving from its place to its last place. Some soft thing softly stirring soon to stir no more. To darkness visible to close the eyes and hear if only that. Some soft thing stirring soon to stir no more.... By the voice a faint light is shed. Dark lightens while it sounds. Deepens when it ebbs. Lightens with flow back to faint full. Is whole again when it ceases.’

A recent (2023) setting by Julian Anderson of Zarathustra’s roundelay followed. Undaunted by Mahlerian precedent, composer and performers (here the Pierrot ensemble, joined by soprano Alice Rossi and conductor Geoffrey Paterson) made something new yet old, in that sense at least like Saunders and Birtwistle. It is tribute to their success that not once did I think of Mahler, save for the occasional resonance, perhaps via Schoenberg. Stravinskian inheritance seemed at least as strongly in play, not least in rhythm. It opened de profundis – how could it not? – yet soon moved on, even before Rossi’s entrance. If the pace was slow – again, how could it not be? – it seemed over too soon, like midnight or a Nietzschean aphorism. Much caught the ear. vocal and instrumental melismata seemingly inciting one another, building to a midnight climax both dark and refulgent, touching and perhaps ironic in the brevity of its evocation of eternity. 

To complete the first half, we heard the premiere of the English version of the late Peter Eötvös’s Secret Kiss (2018). Another arresting opening, this time from percussion, set the scene for a typical yet typically individual melodrama, words selected by Mari Mezel from Alessandro Baricco’s novel Silk. Five players, on flutes, clarinets, percussion, violin, and cello, were joined by reciter Meg Kubota and Paterson, seemingly bringing a silken world into existence before our ears. It was an instrumental as much as a verbal drama we heard, processes recognisably rooted in central European tradition – Webern, Bartók, et al. – yet reinvented in magically pictorial terms that were entirely Eötvös’s own, Bluebeard notwithstanding. My sole reservation related to what sounded like overmiking. I wondered whether it were simply a feature, if an odd one, of the piece, yet its persistence in the two Birtwistle pieces suggested otherwise. Maybe it was nonetheless an artistic decision; if so, at least to my ears, it proved a pity, detracting not insignificantly here and later from the ultimate coherence of otherwise spellbinding performances. 

Lisa Illean’s Cantor (2017) opened the second half, verse by Willa Cather separated by entirely different, yet no less exquisite, instrumental movements for somewhat augmented ensemble, more string-focused than anything heard previously (or afterwards). Whether it were simply Schoenberg on my mind, I am not sure, but I sensed his presence at a distance in noticeably un-Schoenbergian, postspectralist (?) music: a pattern from Pierrot here, a floating vocal line there. As with all pieces on the programme, rates of change, be they melodic, harmonic, or timbral, seemed just right in work and performance alike. 

The Woman and the Hare (1999) brought singer, reciter, ensemble, and conductor together in exploration of a post-Gawain landscape both alluring and threatening, unmistakeably English in its melancholy and in its vocal and instrumental reinvention of Morgan Le Fay. The two voices contrasted and complemented, embellished and elucidated, music not necessarily ‘autonomous’, yet unquestionably ‘itself’. Stravinsky was an abiding, yet intangible presence, as sure as in Punch and Judy, all the way down to Birtwistle’s musical bedrock. And like Stravinsky’s Pierrot, it was above all an instrumental masterpiece—and yet… 

To hear …when falling asleep immediately after (twice, the second time as an encore) was instructive and, it seemed, inevitable. The 2019 commission sounded less a homage to the earlier work, despite the return to responsorial combination of singer and reciter, than its distillation in a new yet related world. Rilke in English translation (Jochen Voigt) and words drawn from Swinburne’s elegy for Baudelaire here sounded more strongly in opposition, until they were not. Instrumentalists played on as as ever-changing voice of continuity, in this world and the evening’s music as a whole.

Musikfest Berlin (5) - Aimard/BPO/Nott - Mazzoli, Eötvös, and Ives, 8 September 2024

Philharmonie

Missy Mazzoli: Orpheus undone
Peter Eötvös: Cziffra Psodia (German premiere)
Ives: Symphony no.4

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ernst Senff Choir (chorus master: Steffen Schubert)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Gregor A. Mayrhofer (co-conductor)

Jonathan Nott (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

This was, by any standards, a varied programme, though I am not quite sure what connected the three works on offer. That all received excellent performances from the Berlin Philharmonic and Jonathan Nott – Pierre-Laurent Aimard joining not only for Peter Eötvös’s Cziffra Psodia for piano and orchestra, but also as one of the pianists for Ives’s Fourth Symphony – will doubtless not surprise, but is nonetheless worth celebrating. The concert, dedicated by orchestra, soloist, and conductor to Eötvös’s memory, displayed an open-mindedness he would surely have approved. 

First up was Missy Mazzoli’s 2019 two-part suite, Orpheus undone, from her ballet Orpheus Alive. With American minimalism, I try, genuinely. Yet, having some sense of the aesthetic behind it in its admittedly varied manifestations has yet to help me respond as many others do. The piece began, like much of its school, in obviously post-Stravinskian mode rhythmically; here, there were also Stravinskian tendencies in something approaching melody. It offered compelling writing for trombones and playing from them; a strong sense of musical narrative; and, I think, an equally strong sense of personal warmth. I can imagine it working well for dancers, as of course does much Stravinsky. Otherwise, I regret that, for now, I shall simply have to keep on trying. 

Cziffra Psodia was first performed in 2021, by János Balázs, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Mikko Franck, and has garnered a few performances since. This, I imagine, will have gained Eötvös, like Mazzoli, some new admirers, not least for its frank engagement with the piano and orchestral tradition of Bartók. It is neither pastiche nor epigonal, but the affinities, as with the hypervirtuosity of György Cziffra, are surely no coincidence. There were other affinities, naturally: some almost Debussyan chord sequences from piano and cimbalom, but the greater sense was of an organicism one could hardly fail to think of as post-Romantic, despite or perhaps in some ways even on account of the rhapsodic qualities suggested in Eötvös’s punning title. Incisive, substantial, and involving, this was music founded on harmonic progression as much as on melody and rhythm: again, not unlike Bartók. Its four movements and half-hour span offered vivid, helter-skelter writing, married to a keen sense of fun; solo sections that suggested a string of black pearls; a fascinating relationship between piano and orchestra in which the former often seemed to ignite the latter; pealing tubular bells; and more, both to thrill and delight. Rhythms propelled yet also, intriguingly, on occasion found themselves bent. In the enigmatic closing violin solo, was that a conscious echo of both Bach and Berg, or just another instance of the composer writing with unfailingly idiomatic command? 

Ives’s Fourth Symphony received its first Berlin Philharmonic performance nearly fifty years ago, in 1975, under Seiji Ozawa; it was last heard from them thirty years later, in 2005, conducted by Sakari Oramo. The Philharmonie will have added an important spatial dimension then too; Ives’s ‘extra’ solo strings were here placed up by the organ. But that is not really the point of a work that famously, according to Henry Bellamann’s 1927 programme note (in which Ives probably had a hand), seeks to ask ‘the searching questions of What? and Why? which the spirit of man asks of life’. This was ‘particularly the sense’ of the first movement Prelude then and now, given to us with warmth, depth, and astonishing translucency of tone. Yes, it sounded like a prelude, and yes, it sounded ‘Maestoso’. The combination of orchestra and choir, Nott joined by co-conductor Gregor A. Mayrhofer, matched apparent ease in performance with unease of harmonic and other undercurrents.   

The second movement ‘Comedy’ seemed to extend such characteristics in its mysterious introduction. Its stretching of pitches, even of pitch itself, sounded wonderfully fresh—almost as much as it must have done when written and first performed (these first two movements alone) in the 1920s. It rumbled, and continued to rumble, its frustration of unambiguous eruption deeply telling. The whirling vortex briefly put me in mind of Ravel’s La Valse and, more spiritually, of Mahler. Ives’s extraordinary multimetrics, though, were entirely his own, shockingly so. As in Aimard’s Concord Sonata of a few nights earlier, it was the vision, if not the finish, of a James Joyce that came closer as a comparison. Ives, unruly, untamed, and untameable, never took anything for granted. Nor did his interpreters here or in the rich, cultivated string playing of the Fugue, whose corners as well as its counterpart, its emotional import as well as its aesthetic ambition, again suggested kinship with Mahler. 

The fourth movement’s strangeness and conviction – doubtless, for many of us, also strange conviction – built and built, infecting and inspiring the whole. First, I thought it nightmarish, but its quality of apotheosis was not in the slightest negative, nor was it even really dreamlike. It stretched our ears, as Ives’s father told his son music must do. It stretched them, moreover, in multiple directions, more than might even be counted. If the build-up – though to what? – was masterly, so was the winding down, though words are beginning more than usually to fail me. This is music whose categories may not be mine, may not be ours; we probably do not even know what its categories are. At the close, I had no doubt that, whatever its imperfections and its impossibilities, or rather through and on account of them, this was a masterpiece we had just heard and in which, in some sense, we had participated.

Musikfest Berlin (5) – Faust/BPO/Eötvös: Eötvös, Xenakis, and Varèse. 8 September 2019

Philharmonie

Eötvös: Violin Concerto no.3, ‘Alhambra’ (2018)

Xenakis: Shaar (1983)

Varèse: Amériques (performing version of the 1922 manuscript, by Chou Wen-chung)

Isabelle Faust (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Peter Eötvös (conductor)

Hot on the heels of two Peter Eötvös ensemble works at the Kammermusiksaal, many in the audience made their way to the larger hall of the Philharmonie proper, for the second German performance of his Third Violin Concerto, ‘Alhambra’, the local premiere having taken place the night before. Opening, as it closes, with solo violin (Isabelle Faust), it is perhaps surprisingly evocative of the colours and music of southern Spain. This is a walk around the Alhambra’s gardens with antecedents, suggested if never explicit, in Falla, Ravel, and Debussy, as well, perhaps, as Mussorgsky’s promenading. Eötvös employs the orchestra sparingly, hints of a Szymanowskian tapestry or something harder-edged, even Stravinskian, in the air, yet never quite determining the climate. Other solo strings come to the fore: violins, double bass, and mandolin; but so do woodwind and brass, clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer’s arabesquing especially noteworthy. Bells are both suggested and heard, the latter thereby well prepared as music rather than effect. There is something, perhaps inevitably, of Berg to certain, more innig passages, but also to repeated chains of intervals. Ciphers of ‘Alhambra’, ‘Isabelle’, and ‘Faust’ are, apparently concealed, but I should need to listen again, and/or to consult the score, to have them revealed to me. That, on the basis of this performance, I should happily undertake. (I should also like to know, if anyone can oblige, what Faust’s encore was.)

Xenakis’s Shaar, for string orchestra, made a truly elemental impression, its opening lines as striking as any unison in Bruckner, the feelings of awe engendered, maintained, and transformed actually not so very different as some might expect from those inspired by the latter composer. Not that the music really has anything in common, of course; it is what it is, proudly, starkly so – and so it sounded in this Berlin Philharmonic performance under Eötvös, its granitic drama, both earthly and unearthly, inviting comparison with a Hebraic past summoned in the title. Clusters, swarms, ritual; imbued with an implacable sense of rightness, yet never predictable: work and performance alike brooked no dissent. The BPO had never played the work before; it should do so again soon. More Xenakis everywhere, please!

There was likewise no doubting the distinction of the Berliners’ performance of Varèse’s Amériques, Eötvös doing much to highlight the work’s musical interest, not least its debts – some might put it more strongly than that, especially in this first version – to Stravinsky, and to The Rite of Spring in particular. Innovation with timbre notwithstanding, I wish I found the work itself more convincing. Leaving aside its frankly irritating whistles and sirens, the form of what Eötvös ably delineated as a twentieth-century tone poem continues to elude me. The sheer volume and exuberance of Amériques remain quite a thing, of course, but it does go on a bit. Perhaps its placing after the iron discipline of Xenakis was the problem.

Musikfest Berlin (4) – Ensemble Musikfabrik: Lachenmann, Hosokawa, and Eötvös, 8 September 2019

Kammermusiksaal

Helmut Lachenmann: Marche fatale (2016-17); Berliner Kirschblüten (2016-17)

Toshio Hosokawa: Birds Fragments II (1989)

Peter Eötvös: Secret Kiss (2018, German premiere)

Hosokowa: Birds Fragments III (1955)

Eötvös: Sonata per sei (2006, German premiere)

Ryoko Aoki (Noh-performer)

Mayumi Miyata (shō)

Ulrich Löffler (piano)

Helen Bledsoe (flute)

Dirk Rothbrust (percussion)

Ensemble Musikfabrik

Peter Eötvös (conductor)

Images: © Adam Janisch 

The metaphor of the journey has been so overworked, so debased, that it will often now elicit little more than a groan. Perhaps, though, there was something to be retained, lightly, even playfully, from the idea of composers and their music – and its performance – travelling in different directions here, in a splendid concert from Cologne’s Ensemble Musikfabrik.

Helmut Lachenmann might seem initially here to have travelled quite some distance indeed from the composer we know and, in many cases, love. However, as Schoenberg once remarked, ‘a Chinese poet is certainly not only someone who sounds Chinese. Rather, he says something else as well!’ Lachenmann’s Marche fatale acquired a cult following – I account myself a member – last year, when, in its new orchestral version, it heralded Stuttgart’s New Year. It was originally composed for piano, though, which is how we heard it on this occasion, from Ensemble Musikfabrik’s Ulrich Löffler. That in itself made me listen, re-listen, to material with which I had perhaps become over-familiar. (Is that not what Lachenmann bids us do all the time with the debris of German Romanticism?) Oddly, and perhaps only because I knew the orchestral version first, the piano piece sounded more akin to a piano reduction: again, an interesting challenge for my ears. But then, I started to wonder: was not the grit in the oyster here clearer; were not the dissonances harsher; was the music not more evidently fractured? Was this not, in a strong sense, the ‘original’, and what did that mean? Subversion of Liszt’s most celebrated Liebestraum seemed more pronounced. The close certainly had more of the abyss to it. And if I had my doubts about Löffler’s rubato at times, it made me listen – and rendered those fractures more pronounced. Again, surely the point.

Berliner Kirschblüten came as all the more of a surprise, since I neither knew it nor its antecedents (for instance, the 2000 Sakura-Variations on a Japanese folk song, and its 2008 expansion, Sakura mit Berliner Luft). An opening that can sound sentimental immediately has one question one’s own orientalism. Is there anything one can do about it? Perhaps not, but at least it alerted me to the problem in time for the works by Toshio Hosokawa. Then the song from Paul Lincke’s operetta, whose jazzy deconstruction was more than welcome. As with Marche fatale, this was unmistakeably Lachenmann’s mind at work. He was taking a walk on another side, perhaps, but was that not all the more Adornian? Yes, most likely, but it was enjoyable too. Here, the cavernous abyss at the close drew comparison with that of Marche fatale, but was longer and, most likely, deeper, resonance and dissolution two sides of the same coin.

Next came the second of Hosokawa’s Birds Fragments, for shō – used, most likely not coincidentally, in Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern – and percussion. An opening invocation, with strokes on bass drum and piercing cries from crotale, provided in its continuation ritualistic (I think, but am I orientalising?) backdrop for sh­ō chords that drew one in, had one listen to every pitch, to the movement of lines: not entirely unlike Marche fatale, in fact. Its form and duration seemed to me perfectly judged; nor could there be any doubting the distinction of performances from Mayumi Miyata and Dirk Rothbrust. After the interval, in the third, for shō and flute (Helen Bledsoe), the same could certainly be said of performances and form. The flute part, first alto flute, then piccolo, sounded here more akin to commentary upon shō processional, that commentary then susceptible to transformative influence; or so it seemed in terms of a drama that perhaps approached our notions of music-theatre.

Music-theatre in a more emphatic sense had been heard in between, in Peter Eötvös’s Secret Kiss, for reciter (the splendid Ryoko Aoki) and ensemble, here receiving its German premiere. An opening percussion invocation forged a connection with Hosokawa – as well as readying the audience for the world of Noh. Aoki’s recitation of the text (from Alessandro Baricco’s novel, Seta, in Oriza Hirata’s Japanese translation) moved between speech and song, the ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion) inviting further, more or less inevitable, comparison with Pierrot lunaire. And indeed, it was just as much in the instrumental lines that narrative weight and content seemed to lie, all exquisitely crafted yet dramatically involving. Ominous, unsettling, beguiling, radiant: this distilled tale of a nineteenth-century Frenchman travelling to Japan to learn secrets of silk manufacture, of subsequent orientalist enchantment, and of something we might call death, duly enchanted and, moreover, duly invited us to question its and our journey.

The programme closed with Eötvös’s Sonata per sei, only now, thirteen years late, receiving its German premiere, again conducted by the composer. Written for two pianos, three percussionists, and sampler keyboard, it inevitably invites comparison with Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion, as well, perhaps, as with the wondrous spatial acrostics of Boulez’s sur Incises. Bartók certainly seemed to be echoes in the entry of the first percussionist, as well as in the pianists’ first entry. That did not, however, ultimately seem to be the point, the sampler reminding us that, certain formal correspondences notwithstanding – was that at some point a Bartók-like arch? – Eötvös’s procedures were quite different. Groups – that is, the keyboard players and percussionists – sometimes functioned more or less as one, sometimes very much as individuals. Overall form strongly echoed, without quite replicating, movements of a classical sonata and their ‘character’. As with the rest of the programme, I was left wanting more: a sign, then, of a journey well travelled.

Komsi/Calder Quartet - Eötvös and Debussy, 1 October 2016

Wigmore Hall

Eötvös – Korrespondenz (String Quartet no.1)

Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, op.10
Eötvös – The Sirens Circle (world premiere)

Piia Komsi (soprano)

Benjamin Jacobson, Andrew Bulbrook (violins)

Jonathan Moerschel (viola)

Eric Byers (cello)

 

The world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s The Sirens Cycle was preceded by the composer’s first string quartet, Korrespondenz (1992) and Debussy’s early-ish work, from almost a century earlier (1893). The fascinating dramatic concept of Eötvös’s work lies in the correspondence of Mozart with his father, Leopold, from Wolfgang’s time in Paris: it is, the composer writes, ‘a mini opera for string quartet’. Does the concept offer more than it delivers? Perhaps. Once beyond the first of three short movements – scenes, perhaps? – I did not pay much attention to the ‘programme’, nor really to the viola as son and the cello as father, the two violins watching over ‘as two protective spirits or observers’. But is that not what we generally, rightly or wrongly, say makes for good programme music? At any rate, the characterisation, whether tied to that initial conception or no, endured as the instruments’ lines progressed. The excellent Calder Quartet offered confident performances, ‘language’ of whichever nature internalised – and then externalised. If they were gestural performances, they remained musico-gestural. And if the musical language spoke of the Expressionist past at times, there was also something of Stockhausen and Ligeti, at least to these ears.

 

Debussy’s Quartet benefited from a warm, Romantic, yet far from un-Gallic opening. The nature of the string sound, and its possibilities, became increasingly variegated as the first movement progressed. Hearing it after Korrespondenz, certain figures emerged as having something in common. There was also a continuing sense of drama to be heard, to be felt, arguably more so, or rather more conventionally so, than in Pelléas et Mélisande, the opera shortly to come. Climaxes were very well shaped indeed. Characterful playing, with a fine sense of rhythm, marked the scherzo, although certainly not to the detriment of other parameters. Indeed, dynamic gradations proved splendidly expressive of the movement’s contours, both directly and indirectly. The opening of the slow movement seemed to speak of a ‘vieille France’ not entirely different from that of the Schola Cantorum, but the response, sweetly yet far from sentimentally post-Romantic, brought Pelléas to mind. Those tendencies and others intertwined productively, until the finale emerged, at least initially, as perhaps the most modern, even modernist, of the movements. Bartók occasionally came within aural view. At other times, the work’s cyclical nature reasserted itself with a glance to the recent past, but never as ‘mere’ return.

 

The Sirens Cycle was co-commissioned by the Zurich Tonhalle Society, the Frankfurt Alte Oper, Madrid’s Centro Nacional de Difusion Musical, IRCAM, the Paris ProQuartet-Centre européen de musique de chambere, the Südwestrundfunk, and the Wigmore Hall, with the support of André Hoffmann: just the sort of thing, then, to gladden the hearts of our blessed government. To quote the composer, it is again ‘the outcome of an operatic idea, that of putting forward a solo soprano accompanied by a string quartet as if by a choir’. His starting point was Kafka’s Das Schweigen der Siren. ‘This subject so engaged me that I drew in also, and thematically connected to the Kafka, siren motifs from Homer and Joyce.’ Here, I felt the ambition more fully, consistently realised than in Korrespondenz.

 

I could not help but feel the shadow, far from exhausted yet, of Pierrot lunaire, not oppressively so, but perhaps more as a guardian angel. Some of the characteristics, comparisons, I observed in Korrespondenz, announced themselves in the first part, that drawn from Joyce, but in the context of an extraordinary coloratura performance from Piia Komsi, and, of course, of Joyce’s words, they did not detain me. The string-only opening to the third short movement (in this first part), ‘O Rose!’, sounded almost as if a response to Debussy, although, of course, Simon Dedalus – and, it seems, Eötvös too – brought us also, or instead, the light opera of Balfe (The Rose of Castille) and Flotow (Martha). Then, ‘O Rose!’: for me, a brush with Mahler’s ‘Röslein’, although what followed, turned out differently indeed. Words, their resonances, the new use to which they may be put: such, after all are part of the business of Ulysses. The éclat of ‘Snack la cloche!’ and the downward vocal glissando on ‘Jingle bloo’ spoke of a different, yet connected, and yes, sirenic world. ‘Liszt’s rhapsodies’ in no.6 briefly, tantalisingly, evoked all manner of personal correspondences, without ever standing out unduly. Komsi’s ecstasy in the final of these seven movements, upon ‘Pray for him!’ offered a truly operatic climax.

 

With Homer, of course, the language switched to Greek. Retuning too, was necessary, for an interlude in which the first violin, now briefly the vocalist, is ‘accompanied’ by music on three instruments, but six staves (so, at any rate, I learned, from Paul Griffiths’s programme note). Double-stopped trills led us to Homer himself, to soprano recitative (with chimes). Scherzo-like writing – something almost neo-Schoenbergian, which I could not quite put my finger on – gave way to a more overtly sirenic close. The string opening to the final, Kafka part, sounded as if a fusion of quartet and operatic interlude. Kafka’s absence of sirenic song made its point just as powerfully as had its presence. Eötvös shaped a highly convincing musico-dramatic trajectory here, even upon a first hearing. The instrumental close spoke, at least to me, of a post-Romantic melancholy which yet again brought Schoenberg to mind: in this case, with quasi-concertante writing for the first violin, superbly realised by Benjamin Jacobson, the Phantasy for violin and piano, op.47.

LSO/Peter Eötvös - Boulez and Stravinsky, 23 April 2015

Barbican Hall

Boulez – Livre pour cordes

Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
Boulez – Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna

London Symphony Orchestra

Peter Eötvös (conductor)

 

Although he has not (at least I do not think he has) ever held a formal position with the London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez has been a regular visitor to the orchestra; indeed, I have written more than once on his visits here. Not the least of their collaborations was Boulez’s first Complete Webern (the second more ‘complete’, including many of the works without opus numbers), a recording project which can safely be said to be ‘historic’ in the best sense of forever having changed public understanding of the composer’s work – arguably Boulez’s as well as Webern’s. Now that Boulez’s conducting days appear to be behind him – and if he were only a conductor, he would surely still be considered one of the most significant forces in New Music, as some of us might still, quaintly, call it – it fell to Peter Eötvös to conduct the LSO’s ninetieth-birthday tribute. This was no mere second best, but a fascinating, provocative concert in its own right, in some senses very much in line with Boulez’s own work, in some senses going fascinatingly beyond, even coming into fruitful conflict. Just, then, as it should have been.

 

First up was Boulez’s Livre pour cordes, which I had heard recently in a very different performance from the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim. Here there was less Viennese sweetness – I suspect that the very different acoustics of Berlin’s Philharmonie and London’s Barbican Hall will have had something to do with that too – and indeed, the opening of the first movement was decidedly un-easy, even neo-expressionist. In general, Boulez’s music here sounded much closer to Webern, in particular to his op.5 Five Movements, and I also found it sounded closer to the original work for string quartet, if still nevertheless impossible to reduce to its origins. Perhaps surprisingly, then, a work for strings sounded more like a work expressly for strings from the LSO than it did even from the VPO. Eötvös shared Barenboim’s taste for musical drama, but here it seemed almost to be ‘after’ Schoenberg’s op.34, Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene.

Too often nowadays, we have cause to complain about performances that treat The Rite of Spring as a mere orchestral showpiece. That is testament in part, of course, to the rise in playing standards; it would be foolish to try to make that opening bassoon solo less technically secure, out of misguided concern for ‘authenticity’, but the tight-rope is now undoubtedly less of a challenge to today’s excellent players, such as tonight’s Daniel Jemison. But it is also a matter of conductors who fail to convey, perhaps even to appreciate, what can and must still shock in this extraordinary score. Eötvös is certainly not one of them; nor was Boulez. However, whereas Boulez, the last time I heard him conduct the work, had tended to reveal often surprising affinities with Wagner, even Mahler, this was perhaps the most brazenly modernistic account I have heard in the flesh. An incredibly bleak, rather slow opening intrigued. Flexibility of tempo, however, led us inexorably towards that necessary – ‘necessity’ was a thought that often occurred to me – teeming of life, which threatened more than it promised hope. Playing was fierce, precise, abrasive in the best sense, but not without melancholy or, especially from the wind, a Petrushka-like ‘Russianness’. Divided violins paid dividends too: not, I felt, out of concern for ‘correctness’, but in order to heighten the strange, utterly compelling sense of chamber-like cooperation and conversation between different sections and indeed different parts within sections. Throughout, Stravinsky’s cellular technique was audibly, meaningfully apparent, emphasising just how different his concerns were from those of the Austro-German ‘mainstream’. What particularly fascinated, was how, delivered as it was, perhaps not coincidentally, with strikingly Boulezian gesture and economy, Eötvös’s interpretation seemed to look forward, not only to late Stravinsky and indeed to the post-war avant garde, but even to the decidedly non-Boulezian Stravinsky of the 1920s and ’30s: Symphonies of Wind Instruments, yes, but also the neo-Classical works. Hiératique, then, to borrow a marking from one of Boulez’s Notations, but not necessarily in the way he meant it. The controlled delirium – a Boulezian idea, if ever there were one – of the ‘Procession of the Sage’ and the weird mystery of the Sage himself were truly shocking: if you will pardon the cliché, it really did feel as if I were hearing the work for the first time.

 

The Second Part sounded wonderfully world-weary: perhaps, here, there was a little more of the Wagnerian, even Parsifalian, to Eötvös’s reading. (Or perhaps I was projecting; it probably does not matter too much.) The sense hereafter of tragic necessity was overwhelming. Balancing of instruments was quite remarkable; for instance, the strangeness of an early duet for violin and flute, which seemed like an eery, substantially wilder  premonition of something from later in the composer’s career. (It really would be fascinating to hear Eötvös in Stravinsky at his most polemically neo-Classical.) The approach and reality of sacrifice were brutal, hysterical: terrifying. Musical process guaranteed the dramatic feeling of inevitability. And yet, there was room for caprice too. That, as Webern pointed out in The Path to the New Music, is where art comes in, and we should add performance to composition in that respect. ‘To develop everything … from one principal idea! That is the strongest unity… But in what form? That is where art comes in!’

It was something of a revelation to hear Rituel: in memoriam Bruno Maderna in the aftermath of The Rite. It was certainly hiératique again. Melodic lines seemed to find their lineage in Stravinsky as much as in Debussy and Messiaen. They also spoke of and with Boulez’s own voice, seemingly echoing from as far back as the piano Notations, but also looking forward to the orchestral version. The emotional weight was reminiscent of Boulez’s Mahler, never mistaking sentiment for sentimentality, and all the heavier for it. In this great profession of grief, a post-Messiaen processional took its course, again with the utmost inevitability. The LSO players, one felt, could almost, not quite, have managed the performance for themselves; Eötvös wisely restricted his contributions to when they were necessary. There was no more showmanship to his conducting than to Boulez; and yet, in both cases, true ‘individuality’ of conception and voice resounded all the more strongly. Spatial concerns pointed towards Répons; this, one felt, was Boulez and perhaps Eötvös too at their most ‘religious’: quite different from the overt religiosity of Messiaen or Stockhausen, but no less powerful, no less ‘real’. My immediate reaction was to wish to hear the work performed again. Let us hope, then, that this year’s performances will prove no anniversary flash in the pan.

Teztlaff/LSO/Eötvös - Debussy, Szymanowski, and Scriabin, 29 April 2012

Barbican Hall

Debussy – Nocturnes
Szymanowski – Violin Concerto no.1
Scriabin – The Poem of Ecstasy

Christian Teztlaff (violin)
Ladies of the London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Péter Eötvös (conductor)


It was inevitable that the shadow of Pierre Boulez would fall at least a little over this concert, the first of two from which he had to withdraw owing to ill health. Nevertheless, Péter Eötvös, who has taken over two demanding and highly individual programmes without alteration, made them his own to a remarkable extent; or, to put it another way, so as not to suggest self-aggrandisement, he ensured that the listener’s attention was focused upon the music rather than the performers. One of the many aspects of Boulez’s genius has been that for revealing programming, and so it was here, even in absentia. I should therefore dissent from Kathryn McDowell’s description in the programme booklet of the concert as an ‘eclectic 20th-century programme,’ quite apart from the dating of Debussy’s Nocturnes, completed in 1899.

One would perhaps have to return to the likes of Roger Désormière to find a conductor more strongly associated with the music of Debussy than Boulez, and though Eötvös’s performance had its virtues, it also had its slight disappointments. The direct approach adopted from the opening of ‘Nuages’ intrigued, the LSO woodwind almost Classical in character, but strings added mystery upon their entry, putting me in mind of Pelléas. Impressively, the string sound was recognisably ‘Gallic’; I could not help but think that even Désormière would have recognised it as such. Eötvös contributed a compelling sense of line, which, fused with his ear for detail, imparted an impressive sense of something that approaching (wordless) narrative. At times, I thought of Bartók’s ballet, The Wooden Prince, as well, of course, as Liszt’s Nuages gris, greatly admired by Debussy, and the composer’s own Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. ‘Fêtes’ was lively but often somewhat brash, rather as I imagine it might have done under Sir Georg Solti. (I know that he recorded Images, but I have not heard the results.) However, what the performance lacked in refinement, it partly made up in rhythmic certainty. ‘Sirènes’ was again direct in approach, and again benefited from an impressive sense of continuity. Despite a fine contribution from the ladies of the London Symphony Chorus, there have, however, been performances more seductively conceived.

Christian Tetzlaff joined the orchestra for a triumphant performance of Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, as much the orchestra’s show as his, as was announced by the opening, teeming with life and exhibiting a veritable kaleidoscope of colour, answered by a sinuous, beguiling, and unquestionably seductive violin entry. The performance as a whole was highly dramatic, Eötvös and Teztlaff alike ensuring that there was never even the slightest hint that Szymanowski’s golden thread might snap. One felt enveloped, and gorgeously so, yet also in sure hands with respect to direction. The contrast with a recent performance of the composer’s Third Symphony from Vladimir Jurowski was in that respect pronounced. Szymanowski’s originality concerning form spoke for and created itself – clearly and evocatively. And what a glorious wash of sound the LSO could produce, contrasting with Teztlaff’s silver and gold, a contrast lying at the heart of a remarkable performance. Not that that should be taken to imply that Teztlaff’s performance lacked spellbinding and impassioned virtuosity, for it did not; however, the work sounded so much more than a ‘late Romantic’ concerto, if indeed, which I doubt, that soubriquet retains much validity at all. Quite why some of the violin concertos appearing with wearying frequency on concert programmes are preferred to this I truly cannot imagine. At any rate, this must surely have garnered both work and composer a new host of converts. Teztlaff treated the audience to an encore: the ‘Melodia’ from Bartok’s solo violin sonata. His command of line and expressive commitment, especially in terms of hushed intimacy, clearly drew in the audience, for, as Gareth Davies (@flutelicious), the LSO’s principal flautist, tweeted to me during the interval, this was a rendition miraculously free of coughing.

Boulez clearly entertains a degree of ambivalence towards Scriabin; frankly, it would be a strange sort of person who did not. He has spoken of a general preference for the more exploratory piano music, yet has also recorded some of the orchestral works, The Poem of Ecstasy twice in fact. The virtues of our absent guest’s programming were revealed as the opening bars’ sonorities suggested a placing of our composer somewhere between Debussy and Szymanowski. Adam Walker’s excellent flute playing should definitely be accorded a mention, ranging ably from the languorous to the sprightly. Wagnerisms, especially Tristanisms, were attended to, whether in terms of highlighting kinship of material, or more importantly, in the expression of the frustration at inability to climax. (Tannhäuser is surely also an influence, or at least a precedent, here. Perhaps Strauss is too.) What unsympathetic listeners – and performances – might suggest to be mere bombast or indeed mere languor, was granted as true a sense of dramatic justification as one might hope for. Decadent it certainly was – how could it not be? – and so it was down to the last arabesque; yet, even if the music is less ‘progressive’ than some of Scriabin’s piano writing, and even if it is too much of a good, or more likely a bad, thing, I was more than happy to indulge. Should one have felt a little dirty at the end? Perhaps, but even Boulez cannot live by Webern alone.

Exquisite Labyrinth (2) - Gould/Cox/IRCAM/London Sinfonietta/Eötvös, 1 October 2011

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Anthèmes 2
…explosante-fixe


Michael Cox (flute)
Clio Gould (violin)
Sound Intermedia
Carlo Laurenzi (IRCAM computer production)
Jérémie Henrot (IRCAM sound engineer)
London Sinfonietta
Péter Eötvös (conductor)

The second day of the Southbank Centre’s Boulez celebration was composed of a conference, with contributors ranging from Pierre-Laurent Aimard to Arnold Whittall, and this evening concert, focusing on works with live electronics. The derivation from – or perhaps better, expansion and proliferation of – Anthèmes 2 from the original Anthèmes for violin solo, itself derived from the violin part to a realisation of …explosante-fixe..., imparted strong material coherence to the programme as a whole, though just as striking was the astonishing explosion of variety from a single source (ultimately a 1971 kit), arguably still further than that, a single E-flat (German ‘Es’) as a memorial to Stravinsky – and surely also a nod to the opening E-flat of Das Rheingold). If only we could have heard the related Répons too…


First, however we were treated to a conversation between Aimard and Boulez himself. The warmth of initial applause for the composer, suffering from a cold, was striking: a fitting tribute to a career, whether as composer, conductor, essayist, educator, administrator, or simply musical conscience, which continues to dwarf those of so many who have assumed but one of those roles. It was enlightening, especially as a prelude to such a programme, to be reminded of how Boulez has considered electronics above all in terms of a conception of space to clarify polyphony (as opposed to a kind of spectacular spatial tennis, though that may sometimes come into the work relatively incidentally). The method of comparing material whose implications, or many of its implications, Boulez has worked through with those which he has not was delineated as crucial to the composition of those works to be performed – and others, too. Far from coincidentally, the beginning of such explorations was related to his work on the Ring at Bayreuth; indeed, Boulez commented on the inspiration he derived from Wagner: ideas stated in Das Rheingold, only fully exploited in Götterdämmerung. Though this may be more strongly evinced in the orchestral Notations, there is surely precedent for this series of electronic works too. (As a young man, Boulez commented, one has many ideas, but one does not always yet know what to do with them.) Pli selon pli was also discussed, Boulez insisting – and who would need to be convinced?! – that he was not writing algebra, but composing according to the meaning of Mallarmé’s verse, for instance the importance of the number eight, and the dialectic between ornamented and syllabic vocal writing. That, however, was really a story for another day. On all occasions, however, we were to hear how to a certain extent Boulez’s experience as a conductor might, as he put it, have helped ‘destroy’ his experience as a composer. For, as Bakunin, Dresden comrade-in-arms to Wagner, famously remarked, the urge to destroy is fundamentally creative.


Anthèmes 2 was mesmerizingly performed by Clio Gould, Sound Intermedia, and the IRCAM team of Carlo Laurenzi and Jérémie Henriot. I was more or less immediately struck by the Messiaenesque cast of some of the harmonies: something I did not recall noticing before. (Perhaps it was partly a matter of Messiaen having featured so strongly in some of the conference papers.) One hears different things at different times, of course, or at least one does in music worthy of repeated hearings. And from the very outset, I could not help but be seduced by Gould’s exquisite tone, arguably more Gallic in sonority than earlier performances I had heard from Michael Barenboim in Berlin and Carolin Widmann in Salzburg. Actually, there was something of the tennis match spectacular to the electronic to-and-froing, for instance in the second, pizzicato section, but only something, and this was certainly never a sonic ‘spectacular’ for its own sake. Electronics did not merely impress, though; they haunted, too, providing an endlessly fascinating envelope and penumbra for the soloist. Gould’s reading was sharply characterised, offering both contrast and unity, within a fine narrative – for this is, amongst many other things, musical drama – framework: it was playful; it was still; it was so much in between, often all at the same time. One sensed composer and musicians reaching for the skies, very much in line with Boulez’s conception of serialism as an endlessly expanding universe. Instrumentally, one could sense the potential for a full-scale concerto (Anthèmes 3, for violin, orchestra, and electronics, is eagerly awaited), yet at other times one heard a solo work, at others a duet, at others still a successor to the Bach sonatas for violin and continuo. Horizons are for Boulez always there to be expanded. The Queen Elizabeth Hall proved an excellent space for the work and its projection: superior, at least in that respect, both to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (hardly surprisingly!) and to the the Salzburg Mozarteum’s Solitär space.

This would also be the evening when, long having been fascinated by …explosante-fixe…, I came truly to fall in love with it: surely at least in part a consequence of an equally mesmerising performance from John Cox, electronics again, the London Sinfonietta (including flautists, Helen Keen and Rebecca Larsen), and Péter Eötvös. It might have been a much smaller ensemble than that Boulez employs for his ongoing Notations, but such were the initial and subsequent exultancy that it did not necessarily sound so. Throughout, this would prove a veritable garden of delights – and of almost Haydn-like invention: so many possibilities, some taken, some doubtless remaining. The flute is an instrument I can soon tire of, but not here, not in the slightest. One of the conference papers had suggested that we might profitably understood much of Boulez’s music as being ‘about’ music, but that was not how it sounded here; if anything, this was closer to the ‘absolute’ music of German Romantic æsthetics: music, pure if far from simple. Arnold Whittall’s description of Boulez’s latter-day ‘modern classicism’ came to mind. If Stockhausen in his electronic music claimed to be writing from, for, or to outer space, Boulez proved more evocative of another world, aspirant, fantastic – and, of course, seductive. By the time we returned, or rather turned, to the final ‘Originel’ – generative, but concluding – we seemed to hark back to the delicacy of earlier tombeaux: Debussy, Ravel, even Rameau. The material was transformed by what it had earlier become. Lighting – or rather dimming – was sensitively employed for the ‘purely’ electronic music: it made a point without becoming the point. This must qualify as one of the most exciting Boulez performances I have heard, showing up the nasty carping, whether in France or elsewhere, Boulez and his music still endure, as the risible product of ignorance and envy.

Preparing to conduct Le marteau sans maître: Interview with Geoffrey Paterson

This morning, I visited the Royal Opera House to interview Geoffrey Paterson, at present working there as conductor on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. We spoke before rehearsals for The Barber of Seville, on which he is assisting Rory Macdonald. Geoffrey is also hard at work with preparations for the forthcoming Linbury Studio Theatre concert of Boulez (Le marteau sans maître) and Benjamin (Upon Silence) from the Theseus Ensemble, which he founded and whose second concert I reviewed here.

I started by asking whether there was any significance in the programming of Le marteau sans maître for that most nauseating celebration in the calendar, St Valentine’s Day. ‘None whatsoever; it was simply the date in the Linbury we were given, though I think it can serve as a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day concert.’ Some of the imagery in Le marteau sans maître is highly erotic, though. ‘I’m not an expert on poetry at all, but the funny thing with the poetry here is that Boulez only really uses a few words.’ And of course, René Char’s verse isn’t exactly the most readily understood. ‘So you really have something like just an adjective and a noun, with a few verbs thrown in. But whatever you make of the poetry, it’s striking when you think that the whole idea of serialism for many people was the withdrawal of the composer and yet here is something so violent and unpredictable. I didn’t really know what to make of that when I first heard the piece. I can’t really believe that Boulez wanted to shoot himself in the foot or engage in self-critique like that.’ Though in many ways so-called Darmstadt composers were very keen on just that, especially with regard to each other’s works. It does come as a surprise though, after the total serialism of works like the first book of Structures. What perhaps most struck me when I first heard Le marteau was how beautiful, indeed ravishing, it sounds. ‘Yes, I think the first time I heard any of it was on an old interval feature from the BBC, a little black-and-white film. It was done in a very arty way, with the camera cutting. It was one of those rare things; very rarely does one hear anything that is completely unlike anything one has heard before. I didn’t understand it but I was utterly intrigued. That’s what I was so excited about.’

I recalled having had a similar experience with what, I think, was the first Boulez piece I ever heard, the Second Piano Sonata. I listened to Pollini’s recording and really did not understand what was going on, but could tell immediately that something was going on, which I wanted to understand. Odd bits I could discern, the Beethoven connection for example… ‘I actually heard the Boulez sonata before the Hammerklavier sonata. And I had assumed that it was at least hyperbole when people spoke about it being modelled on the Hammerklavier. And then it was really thrilling to discover that that was actually the case, and how it was the case.’ Maurizio Pollini, I remarked, will be playing the Boulez sonata in London in April: the date, it turns out, of the Royal Wedding. ‘It can be another anti-celebration…’

We then discussed the issue of rehearsing the Boulez and the stage that had now reached. ‘I’ve been rehearsing individually with some of the players. You really need to do that first. The players, even those who have performed a lot of contemporary music, are now having to play, in the pieces I am choosing, music that is even more difficult. The best thing, when you are dealing with music of such difficulties, even with the notation, is to go through it individually first, to work out what it all means. Some of it is so horrible to read; the notation is almost fetishistic. That is perhaps the greatest difficulty, though when it come to the viola part – I used to play the viola myself – that is the one verging on the unplayable, particularly when it comes to all of the double-stopping.’ The vocal soloist will be Louise Collett, singing the part for the first time. ‘I’ve known her for quite some time from working in Scotland. She’ll be singing Maddalena in Rigoletto for Scottish Opera this year. She is not a contemporary music specialist by any means, although she sang the Berio Folk Songs very well, but the vocal quality is so important here. We’ve been working through the score together and I’m delighted to be working with her.’

I then asked about the George Benjamin piece, Upon Silence, knowing it only by reputation. Geoffrey reminded me that it had originally been written for Fretwork, and then reworked by the composer for modern instruments, though very much with the intention that the original austerity, indeed a good part of the viol sonority, should be maintained; ‘the way he dulls the sound is very much part of the effect. It’s really an incredibly beautiful piece.’ Clearly this piece by a fellow Messiaen pupil will prove an intriguing companion to the main course of Boulez.

The conversation turned for a while to Boulez as conductor, since Paterson studied with him at the Lucerne Academy. It was interesting to note how eminently practical Boulez’s advice would be on matters of how to get tricky groups of seven or eleven right, always born of experience, sitting down and talking through how they might be heard, understood, and then fitted back into context. The ear helps of course too. ‘Of course, he seems to have pitch as absolute as possible. Mine has got much better and my relative pitch, which is probably more important, has improved a great deal. But Boulez can simply hear every pitch in a great orchestral chord and tell that the second horn is slightly out of tune, hearing the notes as pitches, where others might hear a chord and then try to work out which part of is simply out.’ I was put in mind of a similar situation when I heard Boulez rehearse Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Berlin, when, at a climactic point in the first movement, he was somehow able to correct, ever so courteously, a slight infelicity of tuning from one of the clarinets.

Another experience was working with Péter Eötvös on Stockhausen’s Gruppen. Not just a matter then of being able to beat time at sixty-seven and a half beats per minute, or whatever it might be? ‘No, he would suggest that you sang it. I looked at him, wondering however you might do that. He suggested then singing the harp part. Because the point is that, in these pieces, you are not just there to beat time. If you can’t conceive of the different lines musically, you aren’t going to be able to communicate that to the players.’

It was a delight to learn that our conductor was also a great devotee of Strauss. Operatically, he has not yet had much opportunity, though he had played for an extract from Der Rosenkavalier, which we agreed was a much darker work than many recognise. The moment of the Marschallin’s return in the Third Act, and the straightforward but wonderfully apt cadential means with which it is announced was a particular favourite moment. With regard to the work as a whole, ‘just because it is placed in inverted commas doesn’t mean that there is a lot of what is there in Salome and Elektra’. And of course, those works have their inverted commas too. It was even better to discover an ardent fan of the Alpine Symphony, ‘Strauss at his most serious,’ and in some ways sparer, the ‘Ausklang’ less awash with notes than the earlier tone poems. The extraordinary historical accident of late Strauss being composed at the same time as Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, Webern and Bartók already having died, was not without its irony for those who admire those composers so greatly.

Alexander Goehr, from whose analyses I learned a great deal at Cambridge, was a formative influence for Paterson when an undergraduate there too. He took private compositions lessons with him for quite some time. One of the things he most admired, a word I have heard time and time again with respect to Goehr, is ‘integrity’, another ‘the refusal to play to the gallery, which is very important to me too’. Goehr said that he did not mind at all the style in which something was written, but taste, by which it seems that he meant that ‘integrity’ was crucial; he was critical of composers who had not thought through what they were doing or why, or who were playing for effect. ‘I’m immensely grateful for him making me think much more closely about my composition, though it slowed me down a lot. I don’t mean that in an ungrateful way at all; it was a very good thing. Now, like many people who start off composing, I have found myself doing less of that and more conducting.’

More generally we discussed the difficulties of a great deal of expression within ‘modernist’ works, the adjective being one of which Paterson is wary, since it can often put people off and should perhaps now be considered more historically. He is, he said, very attracted to complexity that is expressively necessary, to works that often need more than one hearing to reveal their secrets, ‘like my first experience with Le marteau sans maître’; after all, if one has heard everything in a work on a first hearing, there is nowhere left to go. (I thought immediately of a great deal of Shostakovich, but kept my thoughts to myself.) Schoenberg, I suggested, was another case of so much expressivity, more than many audiences still seem able to take, though they often reject his music claiming quite the opposite. Paterson’s criticism of some of Schoenberg’s music was tellingly similar to that of Boulez, namely that the new, serial language sometimes falls back upon old forms.

Returning to more contemporary music, we agreed upon a parallel problem to that of the term ‘modernist,’ namely the habit of more conservative listeners to refer to some new music as ‘tonal’, when that seems truly to miss the point of tonality. ‘Just to hear a chord that might appear in tonal music does not make the music tonal, since it does not have the same role at all. For instance, some of the chords in George Benjamin’s piece, though not of course in Le marteau sans maître and other pieces where composers avoid them, might sound like that in isolation, but this isn’t tonal music.’ Nor, of course, is complexity somehow something that appeared in the twentieth century, a favourite case of his being the complexity of the Eroica Symphony. For, in Paterson’s view – and mine – what matters here is what is done with and to the material. One might listen superficially and just hear a tune, but it is the processes that remain crucial, processes which, as he pointed out, are also so apparent in Haydn’s playing with form. Classical composers were not placing consonant chords around to be heard in themselves. The case of Debussy, I suggested, showed the difference: he would sometimes do just that, using chords to be heard, because of their sound; Mozart and Beethoven were certainly not in the business of doing that. With Schoenberg, however, and another Paterson favourite, Elliott Carter, listening in that way is simply not an option. ‘Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra is a wonderful, wonderful work, but you need to concentrate, to keep a sense of what is happening all the time. You can’t listen to it half-heartedly.’

The Theseus Ensemble’s next performance, of Boulez and Benjamin, will take place at 1 p.m., 14 February, in the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House (click here). Further details concerning the ensemble may be found here, and concerning Geoffrey Paterson here.