Berlin Festtage (3) - Staatskapelle Berlin/Rhorer - Beethoven, 7 April 2023

Philharmonie

Missa solemnis in D major, op.123

Camilla Nylund (soprano)
Anna Kissjudit (mezzo-soprano)

Saimir Pirgu (tenor)

René Pape (bass)

Staatsopern Chor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Jérémie Rhorer (conductor)

Image: © Peter Adamik

Thirty years since the release of his recording of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim was due to return to the work, conducting it for the first time with the Staatskapelle Berlin. Alas, that was not to be, yet the first performances the orchestras has given since 1962, at the Staatsoper under Franz Konwitschny – the only others since the Second World War in 1952 and 1947, at the Admiralspalast – went ahead. French ‘early music’ conductor Jérémie Rhorer seemed a strange replacement for Barenboim, but there was probably not a multitude of candidates available. Few conductors approach it regularly; many never do. Wilhelm Furtwängler famously declined to conduct it in later years, considering himself unable to do justice to what he continued to believe to be Beethoven’s greatest work. (Many of us, with a gun to our heads, would agree.) It was also a very strange choice for Good Friday, though perhaps that was not foremost in the minds of those assembling the programme. Rhorer’s approach and, more seriously, his command of these distinguished forces proved of variable success. There were nonetheless (aural) glimpses, sometimes more than that, of what this extraordinary work might in the right hands still be. 

The Kyrie, like much of the work, was taken swiftly. It sounded almost cheerful, at times as if a setting of a different text by a lesser pupil of Haydn. At least the ‘Christe’ section suggested a little more strain, more effort, more difficulty, the four soloists richly expressive on their own, somewhat operatic, terms—which did not seem always to be the same as Rhorer’s. Balances were at times awry. The lead in to the second ‘Kyrie’, though, went both smoothly and inevitably. Rhorer was certainly not without appreciation of the work’s dynamism, even if that sometimes meant scaling it down to something more digestible, rather than scaling it up to antinomies reconciled, if at all, only at the level of the Divinity. And therein, perhaps, lay the greatest problem. What did this mean? What was Beethoven attempting to achieve? Did he do so? Much was too prettified, all too readily reconciled. 

There was, to be fair, creditable, even ecstatic hyperbole to the opening of the Gloria, from both chorus and orchestra. However, Rhorer’s concern for fluency, not in itself of course a bad thing, again continued to smooth over rather than to expose the implacable. Motivic integrity was (often) present, yet a sense of struggle was only intermittent. The timpani roll (Dominic Oelze) announcing the ‘Quoniam’ was really quite something, as indeed was Oelze’s playing throughout that section. And the sheer strangeness of some of Beethoven’s harmonies, allied to their scoring, told here too. Alas, the race to the finish was only successful in parts. There was again some sense of the cumulative, but majesty was more or less entirely lacking, and balances in the setting of ‘Amen’ were all over the place. 

The Credo was likewise more successful when Rhorer gave it space to announce its strangeness. Transparency allowed hearing of often neglected details: a crucial double bass line, for instance, as well as more general counterpoint. Much seemed rushed, though: a great pity when Saimir Pighu announced ‘Et homo factus est’. Again, what did this mean? Should it not be (almost) everything? It certainly did not sound like it. The ascent of Christ into Heaven (‘et ascendit in caelum’) thrilled, though it was peculiar, even unnerving, to hear it on Good Friday. Moreover, necessary strain on the chorus’s soprano voices could be heard towards the close. Beethoven’s writing is cruel, and should sound so. That it did not add up to much more than the sum of its variable parts was, I am afraid to say, Rhorer’s fault, and his alone. 

The Staatskapelle players offered playing of beautiful gravity to the opening of the Sanctus, ‘as if’ chamber music—and all the better for such intimacy. When solo voices joined, the impression was enhanced rather than effaced. Contrast with all the company of Heaven on ‘Pleni sunt coeli’ was one of the most successful, indeed moving, moments in the entire performance. Vibrato-less archaism, somewhere between an old viol consort reimagined and orchestration of an organist’s liturgical ‘preluding’, prefaced the ‘Benedictus’, which at times approached the Beethovenian sublime – Wolfgang Brandl’s solo violin could not be faulted – and was at least not harried; yet much was too readily tamed, even domesticated. 

A different, yet allied, sort of gravity possessed the first section of the Agnus Dei. Its sadness, first reinforced by René Pape’s bass solo, then by other soloists, Martin Wright’s outstanding chorus shadowing them, permitted a fine unfolding. Ultimately, though, it remained a bit too ‘normal’, as battlefield sounds came and went, pictorial, perhaps even ‘interesting’, yet little more. It was well shaped, yet all the time I longed for some sense that everything, even something, was at stake. One does not hear the Missa solemnis often; nor, probably, should one. For me, just one live performance, from Colin Davis at the Proms in 2011, has aspired to and, for the most part, realised the work’s greatness: of ambition, of humility, of awe, of humanity, and of much else. Whether I shall hear another such performance remains to be seen.

Berlin Festtage (1): VPO/Barenboim - Mozart, 6 April 2022

Philharmonie

Symphony no.25 in G minor, KV 183/173dB
Piano Concerto no.27 in B-flat major, KV 595
Symphony no.38 in D major, KV 504, ‘Prague’

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (piano/conductor)

 

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s annual Festtage have been cancelled two years running, but in 2022 it is third time lucky. Wagner, however, has another year off prior to the forthcoming new Ring, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. He is replaced with Mozart, in the guise of all three Da Ponte operas in new—or almost new—productions by Vincent Huguet, and three concerts. We began, as has recently become traditional, with a concert from Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, this was the finest performance I have ever heard of the so-called ‘Little’ G minor Symphony, KV 183/173dB. The first movement exposition alone offered weight and lightness, space and urgency, string agitation and the finest woodwind balm, in a fiercely dialectical conception that bent time where necessary (the second group) yet pressed on regardless. Lest that sound unduly Beethovenian—Beethoven would surely have admired, but could never have emulated this—the inverted symmetries of the exposition close (heard twice, given Barenboim’s observance of the repeat) spoke of something else entirely. Here and elsewhere, that perfection of balance which many, Wagner included, have woefully misunderstood in the symphonic Mozart, might historically have been traced to Austrian or Salzburg antecedents, even Johann Christian Bach, but in reality belonged to no one other than Mozart himself. The extraordinary intensity of the development section, especially at its sparest, transformed all before it, preparing the way for, without intruding on, the ineffable, Catholic tragedy of the final return to G minor. Those who fail to understand Mozart theologically will always underestimate him. 

The second movement, warmly and richly lyrical, had its flow and emotional arc equally well judged, Barenboim’s great strength, as in Beethoven, Wagner, and much else, being his ability not only to balance different musical demands but to integrate them. Not for nothing is he an excellent conductor of Schoenberg. There was here enough of the Salzburg serenade to feel kinship, and enough distance from it equally to sense its difference. If the minuet burst forth with a defiance that again would surely have impressed Beethoven, it was in a voice very different not only from Beethoven’s but from the nature of his subjectivity. It might have been God Himself. A garden of delights, whether earthly or heavenly—why choose?—from Viennese woodwind in the trio reminded us of the fallacy of a secular/sacred dichotomy for the Enlightenment at large, and certainly for Mozart. The finale, aptly enough, proved both more defiant and more determined to leaven that defiance with a symmetrical imperative such as heard at the close of the first-movement exposition. Barenboim, conducting here as elsewhere from memory, knew the score in more senses than one. 

There was much to admire in Barenboim and the VPO’s account of Mozart’s final piano concerto too, although the finale tired a little in its second half. Its ‘lateness’ was not exactly exaggerated, but became, intentionally or otherwise, a little too pronounced (for me, though apparently not for the rest of an enthusiastic audience). The first movement, though, received a model performance, its opening tutti bright not maudlin, albeit with subtle harmonic hints at something darker beneath the surface. Transparent Vienna sound here and elsewhere astonished in sheer variegation. Barenboim’s playing was wisely collegial, drawing on what is now a lifetime’s experience. How easy—crucially—he made it sound, as indeed did the orchestra. He knew precisely when and how to draw a different colour from the instrument for a phrase echo or sequence. Perhaps there might have been a little more sparkle, but a hint of melancholy is far from inappropriate here. A dream-like cadenza spoke with the intimacy that was this performance’s hallmark. The Larghetto was warm, loving, though never too much; it expanded the emotional range, gloriously unhurried without ever being merely slow. And the finale began, at least, with all the lightness and energy of the young men Barenboim and Mozart remained. Barenboim showed us how he can still turn a phrase, meaningfully, preparing the next, seemingly effortless. This was still intimate music-making, with no grandstanding, capturing something close to the essence of an innocent rondo that yet knows. 

The Prague Symphony’s introduction was grand and spacious, always moving forward to an implicit goal. Its richness was felt, without needing to make of a point of it; it was that which led us imperceptibly into a first-movement exposition of equal richness and potentiality. It proved as ever-developmental as Beethoven, but again differently, that crucial Mozartian element of balance equally important. A rigorous development section showed Mozart having learned Bach’s contrapuntal lessons well. Beethoven again came to mind in the recapitulation: not because this was ‘like’ his music, but because one could hear where so much Beethoven came from. (It is not only Haydn; Barenboim and the VPO know that.) The exultancy of the final climax was both seen and heard. A similarly developmental Andante had more pronounced lightness and shade, heard—and played—as if in a single, infinitely divisible breath. The finale erupted and concluded: strong, detailed, and full of life, as if an orchestral reflection or elaboration of Don Giovanni, which of course—bear in mind the symphony’s nickname—is in part precisely what it is.

Musikfest Berlin (4) and (5) - Aimard et al.: Stockhausen, 15 and 17 September 2018

Grosser Sendesaal des rbb and Kammermusiksaal

Telemusik (1966)
Refrain (1959)
Zyklus (1959)
Kontakte (1958-60)

Mantra (1970)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano, celesta)

Dirk Rothbrust (percussion)

Benjamin Kobler (piano)

Tamara Stefanovich (piano)

Marco Stroppa (electronics)

 

For two further concerts of music by Stockhausen we moved to the splendid Westend concert hall in Hans Poelzig’s Haus des Rundfunks for a varied programme of electronic and ensemble music, before returning to the Philharmonie’s Kammermusiksaal for Mantra. (Alas, I had to hurry back to London for a meeting and thus missed the final event, a performance of Inori.)

The purely electronic Telemusik opened the first concert. If I say that it sounds more than ever a work of its time, I do not mean that in a disparaging sense; it does not only sound as such. But there is something engagingly remote – just as there will be for Mozart – as well as close to us in hearing such a work; it is now, as indeed one might say of any of these works, a classic. The lights went off. A projected sun appeared above the stage. Who knows which? Our own, under which the languages and cultures of the world make hay before the end of days? Sirius? Some other? A generic light, even? We seemed to hear its rays, their light, their refraction, even perhaps reflection (in whatever sense you care). Songs of the world, of some other world, were heard, sung, chanted, reinvented. A world of music(s) was ours and yet was not; it was now of the past, almost as if we had visited it, as Stockhausen once had visited us. And with that, we made our own synthesis – even in, perhaps particularly in a work without visible ‘performance’. Make of that what you will; that, perhaps, is the point.

Refrain, for three performers (Benjamin Kobler on piano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard on celesta, and Dirk Rothbrust on percussion), came next. If Telemusik offered ritual of a sort both old and new, so too did this. I could not help but wonder whether Boulez had occasionally had it in mind as a precursor to his orchestral Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna. It was mesmerising to watch as well as to listen to; the distinction seemed perhaps unusually false. Serialist theatre, in which freedom and organisation were revealed as two sides of the same coin, revealed silence also to be as crucial as it would be to Bruckner (that despite the giggles of two audience members next to me). Those strange cries of – to? – another world seemed already to look forward to Mantra and the Inori I was fated not to hear.

What an array of instruments one sees and hears in Zyklus, for solo percussionist. I say that not simply, or even principally, in terms of quantity; anyone, given a budget, can offer a large number of instruments. But here the arrangement, the interrelationship, the unity in diversity and vice versa again suggested a form of serialist music theatre for all the senses. Rothbrust’s virtuosity was astounding, but it rightly never came across as mere virtuosity; this was a performance, an act of formal revelation. Variety of attack and reverberation struck as the work of a piano writ large: again, surely implications or at least parallels for later works by both Stockhausen and Boulez. Bells seemed to recall in context both previous works on the programme. Aimard and Kobler both crept into the hall to listen, their collegiality richly rewarded indeed.

After the interval, Aimard, Rothbrust, and Marco Stroppa (electronics) gave us another fine performance: this time of Kontakte. A spatial element always seems to bring out something very special in Stockhausen – and so it was here. So too does theatre, of whatever kind, the piece initiated by Aimard’s rising to sound – not necessarily in the way the innocent eye and ear might expect – the gong: a moment and sound with clear implications for what was to come. Electronic sounds enhanced, responded, developed, just as any other chamber music response, if we may call it that, would. Rothbrust and Stroppa reminded us that percussion and electronics the growth sections of twentieth-century music, perhaps not only Western art music. If anything, they – and Stockhausen – helped here to revive the fortunes of the piano. Not, of course, that an artists such as Aimard needs any such help, nor is his part restricted to the piano. His part at times seemed to take off where the clusters of the tenth Klavierstück had left off. What virtuosity there was to be heard here, both solo and ensemble: this was, as so often with Stockhausen, music both as we knew it and as we did not.

Transformation – to be traced back, if we wish, through Schoenberg and Liszt to Bach – was very much a key to that work’s unendliche Melodie, to borrow not entirely inappropriately from Wagner. So too it was for Mantra, at the Kammermusiksaal, in which Aimard and Stroppa were joined by Tamara Stefanovich. Stockhausen was quite clear that the unfolding of this work was not to be understood as variation form, whatever it might seem to have in common with such writing – and performance. For there is no variation as such, although there is much expansion and contraction: perhaps not unlike another star or how we see, feel, and think about it. So it was here, a fine, crucial line trod with care, understanding, and the keenest sense of drama. That drama here, as elsewhere, was architectonic, just as the architecture was dramatic. It was at times absurd: absurd in its seriousness and absurd in its child-like absurdity. These were players, these were outstanding performances in which we knew we were in the safest as well as the most thrilling of hands. We could therefore surrender to the telling of a story just as much as to the progression of a ritual. The more we listened, the more we watched too, the more we heard and experienced. Form – its importance can hardly be exaggerated here, both in itself and for so much later music – was once again revealed in and through performance. One marvelled in what Stockhausen elicited, what he re-invented, but above all in what he said, in what he sang. A staccato sounded, perhaps even signified as if it had never done so before, so too a tremolo, so even did an arpeggio. If Schoenberg had felt the air of another planet, perhaps this was indeed the sound of something that lay yet further beyond.

Musikfest Berlin (3) – Widmann/BPO/Roth - Stravinsky, Zimmermann, Debussy, and Ligeti, 14 September 2018

Philharmonie

Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1947 version)

Zimmermann: Violin Concerto
Debussy: Images, interspersed with:
                 Ligeti: Lontano, Atmosphères

Carolin Widmann (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

 

One could hardly go wrong with a programme and musicians such as this; I am delighted to report that expectations were at least confirmed and in many ways exceeded. I could moan, I suppose, about the decision to use the 1947 revision of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, both in itself and given what I took to be the implied tribute to Debussy, but even that had its advantages. Indeed, so puzzled was I by the difference in what I was hearing, without initially having known why, that I perhaps listened with still greater attention, making moreover connections to later works such as The Rake’s Progress and Cantata which I might otherwise not have done. There was certainly no doubting its opening spiky aggression, which in context of the festival as a whole – or at least that part of it I had heard – offered a thought-provoking follow-up to George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill. Chordal responses, in the liturgical sense, hinted as much at the Rake as the Rite; perhaps more than ever, this emerged as a threshold work. With the Berlin Philharmonic and François-Xavier Roth, it lost neither its violence nor its rare beauty; indeed, the two were strongly confirmed as two sides to the same coin.

 

How to follow that? With a violin concerto, of course, in this case Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s. The orchestra’s inheritance from Stravinsky remained clear, even if the soloist’s response was initially – this is far too protean a work for such generalisations to hold for long – closer to Berg. And so, Carolin Widmann, Roth, and the BPO took us on a thrilling, wayward journey, the first movement sardonic yet unquestionably ‘felt’, its final peroration earth-shattering. Piano incited, invited the violin’s central fantasia, that movement’s celesta enigmatic as ever. Orchestral depth in string unison resounded just as it might have done in Bruckner. Here as elsewhere, Roth’s expert, unassuming handling of climaxes proved second to none. It was rather as if late Prokofiev had taken a trip. Much the same might be said of the finale, although here it was an earlier Prokofiev of the Second Violin Concerto rather than Cinderella. The echoes – one might, uncharitably, put it a little more strongly – of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements came through loud and clear, but they were gone before one knew it, xylophone having launched into a solo Danse macabre for a new age that had not yet forgotten its pre-war roots. Bach too was to be heard, certainly in the cadenza. What an exhilarating, polystilistic mix!

 

The second half engagingly interspersed the three panels of Debussy’s Images, in the order ‘Gigues’, ‘Rondes de printemps’, and ‘Ibéria’, and two works by Ligeti: Lontano and Atmosphéres. ‘Gigues’ offered mystery that was clear and clear-eyed, rather in the line of Boulez’s Debussy, yet certainly not to be reduced to that. Roth struck a typically fine balance between what Boulez and his generation would call musical ‘parameters’: rhythm against – or with? – insidious harmonies, and so on. Lontano seemed to pick up with respect to pitch, timbre, and more; this was a Klangfarbenmelodie of sorts, with roots. Even a strange electronic interference – a hearing aid? – with the tuba seemed curiously apt, all the more so when I realised that it was in fact the violins! ‘Music of the spheres’ is a cliché, but here it seemed the right cliché. This was as well shaped, balanced, and played a performance as I have heard – at least.

 

What could not be changed by such listening (and performance)? ‘Rondes de printemps’ certainly seemed to have been. I found myself better able than ever to make connections with ‘Gigues’ too, perhaps especially with respect to relationships between harmony, rhythm, melody, timbre, and so on. Debussy here positively demanded to be heard with hindsight. And yet, his music remained as elusive as ever in a truly mesmerising performance; this is and was no zero-sum game. Atmosphéres again offered the challenge only to connect, its woodwind unquestionably Stravinskian, chords emerging that I could have sworn I recognised from Debussy. Did I? Does it matter? Swarming double basses suggested electronic viols. Transformations and contours were once again expertly shaped by Roth – and, of course, by this great orchestra. It closed with one of the most magical fadings a niente I have ever heard.

 

Not, of course that ‘Ibéria’ is nothing; this was definitely something. ‘Par les rues et par les chemins’ proved sly, sinuous, and razor sharp. That did not mean that lines could not blur, but there was no doubting the intent, the musical meaning behind such blurring. Much the same might be said of ‘Les Parfums de la nuit’, albeit with different colours, temperature, and of course languor. The precision of playing in this atmosphere was just as impressive as in Atmosphères. ‘Le Matin d’un jour de fête’ seemed to unite so many tendencies over the evening as whole: a true conclusion. It was never, however, anything other than itself. The subtle swagger of opposing forces that might confront each other or might dissolve, transmute proved a typical Debussian, yes painterly joy.

Musikfest Berlin (2) - Aimard: Stockhausen, 13 September 2018

Kammermusiksaal

Images: © Adam Janisch 

Stockhausen: Klavierstücke III, IV, II, I, V, VIII, VII, VI, XI, IX, X

Pierre Laurent-Aimard (piano)

I have no doubt that memories of hearing Pierre–Laurent Aimard play the first eleven Stockhausen Klavierstücke will remain with me forever: like hearing Maurizio Pollini in Chopin or Daniel Barenboim in Beethoven. Not so much a performance of the year as of a lifetime, this recital proved just as all-encompassing and arguably still more necessary. Certainly no one present would have been left doubting or denying, in what would have been his ninetieth-birthday-year, Stockhausen’s demand to be heard alongside those and other past masters.

First came the first four, in the order III, IV, II, and I: almost, but not quite the order of composition (III, II, IV, I). The third is not only the shortest of the Klavierstücke but the shortest of all Stockhausen’s compositions. We hear – chez Aimard, we certainly heard – not only Webern enthroned but Webern instrumentalised: the Webern of that celebrated ‘productive misunderstanding’, conscious or otherwise, of what we still just about cling to as an idea of ‘Darmstadt’ or ‘the post-war avant garde’. What I heard immediately was a tone, a general approach to performance I recognised from having Aimard’s Art of Fugue ten years ago. Then I mused that he had, to my fascination if not always to my (irrelevant) liking, been playing Bach through the ears of Darmstadt; this seemed to confirm that. (I should now very much like to hear his Art of Fugue again.)

The fourth Klaverstück sounded both similarly and as a response. Already my ears – and, I am sure, the ears of the audience more generally – were adjusting, hearing by virtue of Aimard’s outstanding performance the relationship between all musical parameters not only set before us but dramatised. This Stockhausen was an heir to many, but was without doubt a Teutonic heir to the Messiaen of the second of the Quatre études de rhythme, ‘Mode de valeurs et d’intensités’: that extraordinary, in many ways quite atypical (for the composer), first essay in ‘total serialism’. Any lingering Romantic doubts would instantly have been silenced. Can, for instance, dynamic contrast be ‘expressive’ if it is non-negotiable? Of course: all we need do is listen. Stockhausen’s music revealed itself – or rather, was revealed by Aimard – as sonorous architecture in time just as much as Beethoven’s.

Building of voices in the second Klavierstück seemed again to have some points of correspondence with a Bach fugue: only superficially, though, for this was no one other than Stockhausen. And yet, the sense of variables as heard in ‘traditional’, earlier music continued to grow in Aimard’s performance of the first: interacting, converging, just as they would in Bach or Beethoven, alongside a ‘new’ understanding of them, perhaps long since forgotten, as musical ‘parameters’. Its emphatic final note, sustained, reverberating seemed to ask: is this a climax, a reconciliation, something new? Perhaps more important, it also seemed to ask whether such questions, such Romantic remnants retained any meaning.

Number five came fifth. In Aimard’s hands, it opened as if a ‘Jimbo’s Lullaby’ for the fifties, albeit with none of Debussy’s equally challenging vagueness. Such precise, magical variation in reverberation was not the least ‘expressive’ device to be heard here. Intervallic listening – a remnant of Webern? – will perhaps always throw up some oddities; a leaning upward minor sixth suddenly suggested to me the opening of Tristan. But that is hardly an issue unique to this music; and, in any case, why not? Furthermore, one is not listening to such intervals in isolation. Context is crucial, however ‘context’ may be considered. The eighth proved jaw-droppingly different in character, the contrast between what I heard as metre and its bending suggestive of a reinvention of rubato, both ironic and utterly sincere, unquestionably hard-won.

The seventh sounded with particular force as a response to other music: both heard here and elsewhere, perhaps even Boulez’s Second Sonata. The opening repetitions of C-sharp, always with different resonance, offered somehow a focus on something both comprehensible and incomprehensible. (Is that not the case with any music worth our time?) No one listening to Aimard’s performance could doubt the constructivism at work here that seemed somehow to blossom into something strangely akin to a reinvention of the sonata principle. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, I started to hear intimations of Liszt. The first half closed with the sixth Klavierstück, which struck, at least to my ears, a note of defiant struggle, both traditional, even Romantic, and not. By now, the piano was sounding more and more as an instrument reinvented, our very experiences and ideas of sound and listening having been transformed. Somewhere, perhaps, in this aural penumbra were the seeds of Stockhausen’s more overt later mysticism. And yet, this remained music as generative, as dialectical as Beethoven. Intensity of work and performance alike had become close to unbearable; time, then, for a drink.

The second half opened with the eleventh Klavierstück. Rightly or wrongly, I very much felt here that typical ‘after the interval’ reinvigoration. These things matter, however much Stockhausen may (justly) have disdained our traditional concert-going practices. It was certainly not a negative thing: pitches, intervals sounded renewed in themselves rather than hermeneutically. Did the hoary Romantic idea of ‘absolute music’ have life in it yet? There were flashes of a not un-Boulezian frenzy and fury to be heard, though the architecture could hardly have been more different. I started to think of material, even poetic contrasts between swirling, serial constellations in the sky and something more traditionally, even harmonically grounded. Rotation was the thing here, I think, although I could not explain why. Poetic control, a related idea, was the one that came to me in the ninth. It was evocative – but surely of ‘itself’. What a sense of drama it nevertheless possessed. Not the first but certainly the most grievous of the evening’s telephonic interventions blighted a good few of the closing seconds.

For the tenth and final piece, Aimard put on his fingerless gloves. He and Stockhausen taught us once again, even more thoroughly than before, to re-listen – even before the truly shocking physical, musical drama of those celebrated cluster glissandos. It was not so much difficult to credit that there were only two hands – two arms, really – playing as difficult not to credit that there were not twenty. Two ears certainly seemed insufficient to listen with; alas, that was all I had. Radical hardly seemed the word; again, it was all I had. Something quite extraordinary happened during the piece’s course: through the swirling cauldron contents of cluster reverberation, a world was put (back) together. Order out of chaos? Once again, this music, these performances reached back to Bach and beyond, and forward to Stockhausen’s own Licht dramas. As I said, the performance of a lifetime.

Frang/BPO/Fischer - Bartók and Mendelssohn, 21 December 2017

Philharmonie

Bartók: Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz 100

Bartók: Violin Concerto no.1, Sz 36
Mendelssohn: Selection from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opp.21 and 61: Overture and nos 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13

Vilde Frang (violin)

Mari Eriksmoen (soprano)

Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)

Ladies of the Philharmonia Chor Wien (chorus master: Walter Zeh)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Iván Fischer (conductor)

 

What struck me initially during the first of the two movements of Bartók’s 1933 version for orchestra of his Hungarian Peasant Songs was the sound of the Berlin Philharmonic. Many have commented, whether since the departure of Claudio Abbado, since that of Herbert von Karajan, even since the death of Wilhelm Furtwängler, on how the orchestra has lost ‘its’ sound. Depending on one’s standpoint, there is either a great deal of truth in that or there is none; or perhaps there is a third way too. Certainly the orchestral sound has not remained the same, but has that of any orchestra? Here, I heard – perhaps this has come from hearing the orchestra often over the past year, in the Philharmonie – what I might characterise as a ‘modern Berlin sound’, both in character, rich, deep, and yet translucent, and yet, almost paradoxically, if one is talking about ‘a sound’, adaptable, according not only to the music, but also to the conductor. Am I saying anything at all there? I am not sure, but I decided to mention it, since the thought struck me with some force.

The performance of that opening work sounded very much, well, as the opening to a concert, almost as if it were the aural opening of a storybook, which in a sense it was. Fantastical (at times) orchestration made the original material sound new, just as a Bach orchestration might, and yet, the ‘original’ was still there, just as with Bach. Moreover, one could hear where the later Bartók came from, too; affinities even with the Concerto for Orchestra presented themselves. If I occasionally found Iván Fischer a little laboured, keen to underline, less keen to suggest how the dances of the second movement might hang together, there was no denying the straightforward excellence of the Berlin Philharmonic’s playing – which, I think, Karajan and Abbado, perhaps even Furtwängler, as well, of course, as Simon Rattle, would happily have recognised. And the final dance was unmistakeably a climax.

Vilde Frang joined the orchestra for Bartók’s First Violin Concerto. Her initially haunting solo line truly drew one in to listen. Odd though this may be sound, I barely noticed to start with that other violinists, then other instrumentalists had joined her, such was the unanimity of purpose, almost as if the musicians were part of a giant orchestral keyboard. (I thought, then, of Boulez’s sur Incises, and of his work with this orchestra.) Chamber music thus blossomed into orchestral music, in a truly extraordinary way: all the time, so it seemed, led by the golden thread of a solo line, even when it had fallen silent. The second movement offered a vigorous response, very much in the manner, if not quite the style, of the later Bartók. Fast vibrato from Frang proved no obstacle to the surest of intonation, for her violin playing proved just as commanding as her broader musicianship. Musical connections with Prokofiev, even Szymanowski, suggested themselves, without this singular piece ever sounding quite ‘like’ anything other than itself.

 

I presume the programming of music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was intended as a joke, given the date of the winter solstice. At any rate, it brightened the darkness of a Berlin winter. It is perhaps peculiarly difficult to speak of Mendelssohn’s music without resort to cliché. Words for the Overture – that perfect miracle, from a seventeen-year-old – present themselves all too readily, whether in work or performance: aetheral, gossamer, and so on. Those words certainly came to my mind more or less immediately, along with the recollection that Mendelssohn, so wisely, had once remarked that the problem with music was that it was more, not less, precise than words. Perhaps I should give up here, then, but I had better say something more. The aetheral strangeness of those opening chords actually put me in mind a little of Mahler: the chorale in the first movement of the Sixth Symphony, to be precise; the gossamer lightness of the Berlin strings’ response proved a true delight. And if Fischer, to begin with, sounded unduly Toscanini-like, harrying the score somewhat, he soon settled down. He understood – as many, surprisingly do not – that the end of the development here is, as often with Mendelssohn, a point of exhaustion, even if he somewhat overdid that exhaustion. It was, moreover, a joy to hear a full string section (fourteen first violins, down to six double basses) in this music. And who would not melt upon hearing those strings, or indeed Emmanuel Pahud’s flute in the recapitulation?

 

The Scherzo was as lithe as it had been under Abbado, and at least as full of woodland character (those clichés again, I know). This might sound banal, and perhaps it is, but I was moved to marvel, which I do perhaps less often than I should, at quite what a modern symphony orchestra can accomplish, and in particular at what this modern symphony orchestra can. I was taken a little by surprise at the German in ‘Ye spotted snakes’ or rather, ‘Bunte Schlangen, zweigezüngt!’ Schlegel’s celebrated translation has its own enchantments, though, as of course does Mendelssohn’s score. If I might have preferred a little more warmth initially from soprano, Mari Eriksomoen, that was certainly forthcoming from Kitty Whately and members of the Philahrmonia Chor Wien, who stood up from within the orchestra. And any reservation was more a matter of personal taste, or lack thereof, than anything else; these were fine vocal performances. Fischer let the music run away with him occasionally, but recovered well enough. Wordless drama characterised the Intermezzo, again bringing those Mendelssohnian thoughts concerning the ‘definiteness’ of music to mind. Delectable horns and woodwind came very much to the fore in the Nocturne, just as they must. Fischer’s way with it was slightly on the sectional side, but I should not exaggerate. There was, moreover, great passion to be heard from the strings. A resplendent and, yes, moving Wedding March prepared the way for the mysterious, quirky, Mahlerian foreshadowing of the Marcia funèbre. The final movement bound together various gossamer threads admirably. My only regret was that we had not had more of the music, and indeed the play itself. And there was ambiguity to those fairies too, especially in the delivery of their final line: 'Trefft ihn in der Dämmerung!’

 

RSB/Hrůša - Dvořák, 17 November 2017

Philharmonie

Stabat Mater, op.58

Simona Šaturová (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Steve Davislim (tenor)

Jan Martiník (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Rustam Samedov)

Schola of the Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Benjamin Goodson)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

For whatever reason – I could speculate on a few, but shall not do so here – many, if not all, large-scale choral works from the nineteenth century seem to have fallen out of fashion, perhaps especially in Britain. Brahms’s German Requiem will surely always have a following, and rightly so; but I have managed to hear Elijah – formerly, at least to the Victorians, ‘“the” Elijah’ – precisely once, and St Paul never. Nor had I ever heard Dvořák’s Stabat Mater before in concert. (As for the following Verdi’s Requiem has, it can only be accounted for by the following mysteriously acquired by the rest of his regrettable œuvre.) It was a delight, then, to hear such a fine performance from the Berlin Radio Choir and its ‘Schola’, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB), and Jakub Hrůša. Even if I had my doubts about some of the solo contributions, they were largely on matters of taste rather than anything more fundamental.

To ascribe grief – and ultimately, consolation – in such a musical setting straightforwardly to personal circumstances will usually be to sentimentalise; artistic creation is never, thank God, quite so straightforward as that. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the sequential loss of his three children may have had some connection with what Dvořák wrote, even though it goes far beyond that, to what we might at a pinch – before deconstruction sets in – still consider a (more) universal message. His setting is certainly an unusually powerful, focused work for a composer whose unevenness and, sometimes, formal inadequacy are often skated over by apologists of nationalist and other hues. (That hapless Seventh Symphony, for instance, whatever its incidental pleasures!) At his best, Dvořák is excellent indeed; all too often, however, he is not at his best. He comes at least close to that best here, I think, and often indeed reaches it.

Its opening sadness – first, those extraordinary repeated F-sharps, the sharp sign a longstanding piece of musical crucifixion iconography, then a crucial, as it were, descending figure – registered not only powerfully, but, in a dynamic sense, dramatically. Icy or, better, cold – since it is certainly human – that descending orchestral figure grew ever more intense with every sequential or developmental reliving of its pain. Here, as often in this work, Dvořák proves more ‘symphonic’ than in any of his symphonies, or at least more consistently so – with, as ever, the great exception of the deservedly popular Ninth. Or maybe, I began to wonder, given the distinction of the performance, it was just that I had not heard Hrůša conduct them. The music seeped into, formed the foundation, motivic and dramatic, for the first movement (choral and soloists): soft at first, building to beautifully shaped climaxes, without merely determining it. Indeed such was the distinction of the choral singing, words and notes equally well projected, that one had the retrospective sense that the words of the poem had determined the music of the introduction too.

Alas, soprano Simona Šaturová’s first entry was, quite frankly, weak, and both the tenor (Steve Davislim) and bass (Jan Martiník) proved rather ‘operatic’, in an almost Verdian way, for me. Only Elisabeth Kulman’s predictably excellent way, rich of tone, thoughtful of words, seemed in keeping with the rest of the performance. Davislim and Martiník sang very well on their own terms, though, and I can only presume that Hrůša had no problem with those terms either. It does one no harm, in any case, to listen to performances of high quality that do not correspond to how one instinctively, or indeed otherwise, hears a work in one’s head. In that sense, only Šaturová was disappointing, and she improved as the work proceeded. If her vowels were odd, and her consonants often indistinct, in her later duet (‘Fac, ut portem Christi mortem), her line was much cleaner by then.

A great strength to Hrůša’s reading was that there was always a strong sense of the work as a whole, just as in a symphony. Individual movements, or numbers, or whatever we want to call them, were sections of the poem, not poems in themselves. And so, the second movement Quartet followed on, related to, intensifying, certainly not repeating the mood of its predecessor. Even if I did not always care for the style of the solo singing, the RSB’s playing was second to none, not least the sweetness and warmth of the strings. (Czech music is no better served by ascribing some birth right to ‘national’ orchestras, than English music is. Who, after all, is better with Elgar today than Daniel Barenboim?) Fundamentals, in the harmonic and a more general sense, were always well taken care of: generative, again just as they would be in a symphony. The following chorus continued in similar vein: which, again, is to stress ‘continued’, with the kinship and difference that implies. The cries of ‘fac’ were every bit as ‘dramatic’ as one could have hoped for, not least since they were presented in context, no mere ‘effect’.

Different characters were to be heard in the following movements: never unnecessarily contrasted, but likewise never quite drawn from the same colours. Brahms, for instance, haunted the tenor solo and chorus, ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’, but in the orchestral sound itself, orchestral and textures themselves simpler, yet undeniably radiant. As the work progressed, transformation, even perhaps transfiguration, crept upon us. It was difficult to say precisely where or when: doubtless as it should be. Hrůša’s control of large-scale structures proved just as un-showily impressive as it had earlier this year when I heard him conduct – magnificently – the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

The neo-Baroque character of the penultimate movement, the solo contralto ‘Inflammatus’ was for me very much a highpoint – both of work and performance. Compassion here seemed very much to the fore, both for Kulman and the orchestra. Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, but certainly not to be taken for granted, Hrůša proved masterly in binding together the work in its final quartet and chorus. It was not merely a recognition of reappearance of earlier material, but of its developmental quality; contextual difference spoke just as strongly as similarity. There was ambiguity, quite rightly, at the close: exultant, yet not unalloyed. That one could – and this listener, at least, did – read back into what we had heard before. This, then, was an excellent concert; I was sad only to have had to miss the bonus concert of a cappella works scheduled immediately afterwards.

Musikfest Berlin (7) – Isang Yun 100 Chamber Concert, 17 September 2017

Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie

Quartet, for four flutes (1986)

Glissées, four pieces for solo cello (1970)

Gasa, for violin and piano (1963)

Trio, for violin, cello and piano (1972/75)

Images, for flute, oboe, violin, and cello (1968)  

Martin Glück, Fang-Yu Chung, Laura Schreyer, Ziangchen Ji, Roswitha Staega (flutes)

Birgit Schmieder (oboe)

Clemens Linder, Sunyung Hwang (violin)

Adele Bitter (cello)

Holger Groschapp (piano)

The Korean-German composer, Isang Yun, was born on 17 September 1917, one hundred years to the day before this commemorative concert. His was, by any standards, a dramatic life: a figure in the resistance to Japanese occupation, a participant in the Darmstadt summer schools and other important aspects of European musical life, kidnapped from West Berlin in 1967 by the South Korean military regime and charged with communist subversion, released two years later following an international outcry, and settling once again in Berlin, where he would live until his death in 1995. He aimed to combine, even integrate, elements of European and Asian – not just Korean – music. This concert, part of the Musikfest Berlin, offered an opportunity to hear various chamber music pieces, very much, it would seem, at the heart of his output, especially later in his career. They were all new to me; my remarks should be taken very much in the spirit of a first hearing. Insofar as I was able to tell, the performances all gave committed accounts.

I hope that flautist friends will forgive me when I say that the prospect of a piece for four flutes did not exactly fill me with joyous anticipation. As it turned out, I rather enjoyed this 1986 Quartet, both as work and performance. In four sections, it broadly seemed to encompass a journey if not from darkness to light then from deeper tones to something almost seraphic. The interval of a minor third seemingly in some sense fundamental, the work moves upwards in various combinations from two bass flutes and two alto flutes, through four standard sized flutes, two of them then swapped for piccolos, and finally to one of each variety; the turning of the four seasons also came to my mind. Perhaps it was simply because the example of Boulez comes to the fore in my memory, but the arabesque quality of the writing did have me think of his music at times, although Yun’s music seemed far more inclined to repeat, even if not exactly. The return of the bass flute in the final section heralded a change of mood, of pace, figuration above notwithstanding; something akin to the full range of this family of instruments offered a sense of culmination.  

The twelve-note organisation of Glissées, for solo cello, did not preclude a similar sense of something close to, if not to be identified with, tonality. It had, in Adele Bitter’s exciting, rich-toned performance, a strong sense of line, albeit with greater disruption than the preceding work. As time went on, I began to hear – or at least believe I did – more dodecaphonic process. The functional and expressive qualities – not that I intend a distinction between the two, quite the contrary – of glissandi fascinated, as the piece moved towards what I thought of, in homage to Nono, as a canto sospeso.

Gasa, from 1963, seven years earlier, perhaps had a greater proximity of some elements of ‘avant garde’ language, although, less, I think, of its temperament. If I knew a little more about East Asian music, perhaps I should find an answer there, perhaps not. Again, twelve-note method seemed not merely an element of organisation, but something, if far from the only thing, to be heard. There was also, in work and performance, a strong sense of drama, of whatever variety. The title means ‘Song Words’ in Korean: interesting, since I had thought of it more as a wordless scena than a song as such. I later discovered the following characterisation by the composer: ‘Gasa exists in space. It takes no heed of time – each moment exists in space and that space is unending. Within this (space) however there exists a dramatic development.’ Again, that was not necessarily how I had naïvely heard it, but it made me keen to hear it again with those words in mind.

The two movements of the Trio (that is, piano trio) were written in 1972 and 1975, on either side of the death of one of Yun’s teachers, Boris Blacher. Intervals, as in the piece for flutes, immediately announced their importance: both, I think, in their recurring use and in their transformation. At a certain point, though, I am afraid I began to found the music all sounding a little same-y, if you will forgive the colloquialism. Perhaps I was just tiring a little. The second movement, faster, at least to start with, certainly offered relief, seemingly more in the line of Glissées and Gasa. I loved the ricocheting of lines between instruments, never quite predictable. Then the music froze, seemingly, but only seemingly, to return us to the opening mood. I thought a little of the music of Giacinto Scelsi here, but perhaps that was just me finding my own bearings.

Images, for flute, oboe, violin, and cello sounded to me a little long for its material, despite the apparent distinction of performance. It seemed curiously static, somehow, but perhaps that was the point. I only learned afterwards – I should have worked it out, given the date! – that it had been written during Yun’s imprisonment, inspired by the frescoes at the Great Tomb of Kangso. Yun’s visit to North Korea, in which he had seen those frescoes, had raised the suspicions of the paranoid Southern authorities, partly leading to his abduction. Whether I should find this musical journey – perhaps not dissimilar to that in the opening work – more interesting armed with that information, or indeed simply on account of a second hearing, I do not yet know. On the basis of much of what I had heard, though, I should not mind finding out. Three cheers, then, to the festival for affording us this opportunity.

Musikfest Berlin (4) – Ensemble Musikfabrik, Aperghis, Lim, Schöllhorn, Baltakas, Zorn, Saunders, and Poppe, 10 September 2017

Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie

Georges Aperghis: Damespiel, for bass clarinet (2011)

Liza Lim: The Green Lion Eats the Sun, for double bell euphonium (2014)

Johannes Schöllhorn: grisaille, for cello (2013)

Vykintas Baltakas: Pasaka – Ein Märchen, for piano (1995-97)

Liza Lim: Axis Mundi, for bassoon (2012-13)

John Zorn: Merlin, for trumpet (2016)

Rebecca Saunders: fury, for double bass (2005)

Enno Poppe: Haare, for violin (2013-14)

Saunders: shadow, for piano (2013)

Poppe: Fell, for percussion (2016)

Saunders: Bite, for flute (2016)

Carl Rosman (clarinet)

Melvyn Poore (euphonium)

Dirk Wietheger (cello)

Alban Wesly (bassoon)

Marco Blaauw (trumpet)

Florentin Ginot (double bass)

Hannah Weirich (violin)

Ulrich Löffler and Benjamin Kobler (piano)

Dirk Rothbrust (percussion)

Helen Bledsoe (flute)

Alas, I was only able to stay for two out of the three sections of this lengthy Matinée concert from soloists of Ensemble Musikfabrik. That meant that I missed out on George Lewis’s Oraculum, Toshio Hosakawa, Three Essays, and two world premieres: Tansy Davies’s Song Horn and Enno Poppe’s Filz. Eleven out of the fifteen solo works still gave me much to experience, enjoy, and reflect upon. And if, unsurprisingly, some spoke to me more from a single hearing – each one was new to me – that does not necessarily reflect upon their ‘worth’. Indeed, it is quite likely to say more about me and my state of alertness than anything else. What probably goes without saying, yet should not, are the extraordinary virtuosity, musicality, and commitment shown by all of these soloists – not least coming on the morning immediately following a not inconsiderable concert of music by Rebecca Saunders and Harrison Birtwistle.

In the first two pieces, Georges Aperghsis’s Damespiel and Liza Lim’s The Green Lion Eats the Sun, I was struck by something at least akin to a ‘traditional’ conception of unbroken line, not least in performance, even when silence formed part of that line. The former, toccata-like, often high in pitch, with considerable, often thrilling, variation in dynamic range too, nevertheless contrasted strongly, interestingly with what seemed to me two contrasted voices, in near-consequential dialogue, in the latter, that impression not least owed to the two bells of the euphonium (one muted). Johannes Schöllhorn’s grisaille was slower, stiller, its navigation through the not quite frozen waters of cello harmonics again offering contrast with the ensuing Pasaka – Ein Märchen for piano, in which Benjamin Kobler had, in addition to an unquestionably demanding piano part, also to tell the story in words (irrespective of comprehension!) It had a beguiling innocence to it, the single(ish) piano line, shared between the hands, blossoming into something more complex, again toccata-like. (That perhaps often will go with the territory of works for instrumental solo.) Another work by Lim, Axis Mundi, again showed a keen sense (to me, at least) of dialogue, in this case between the lower range of the bassoon and something else, not quite to be straightforwardly assimilated to higher pitch. If I could not quite escape the sense of notespinning in John Zorn’s Merlin, for trumpet solo, Marco Blauuw’s performance proved quite mesmerising.

The second – and, for me, final – of the concert’s three parts alternated between Saunders and Poppe. Florentin Ginot’s double bass playing had impressed me enormously the night before, even amongst such a galaxy of instrumental talent; here it did so again in fury. Almost the entire range of the instrument seemed traversed within a few seconds, and that despite the relative leisure of the pace. That done, a dark heir to the Expressionist past revealed itself, without overt, or perhaps even covert, ‘influence’, but at the level of something deeper. I thought of Anselm Kiefer, but again that may just have been me. Poppe’s Haare for solo violin opened almost as if playing with a Bachian wedge opening, although it never quite was. One was made to listen, perhaps almost so as to ascertain what was not repetition. If that sounds quasi-minimalist, I am not sure that it was, but perhaps there was some sort of relationship there. I loved the wild excess of Hannah Weirich’s vibrato (which I presume to have been written in), suggestive almost of a theremin, not least in glissando passages. I was a little more at a loss with Poppe’s Fell for percussion, although again there was no gainsaying the quality of the performance. Either side of it fell another solo piano piece, Saunders’s shadow, and her Bite for solo bass flute. The piano piece, played by Ulrich Löffler, again had something of an intangible sense of association to ‘tradition’ – Stockhausen, perhaps? – without being determined by it. There was certainly no doubting its bold, substantial quality of utterance. The shadows of the bass flute were readily apparent, yet for shadows to have meaning, there must be light, and so there was, in a vivid creation, both compositional and performative (Helen Bledsoe) of chiaroscuro.

I think that, in the case of pretty much all of these pieces, we have probably now reached a stage at which the phrase ‘extended techniques’ has become superfluous. Composers and performers alike, perhaps audiences too, have ensured that, not least through occasions such as this.