Semperoper, Dresden
‘Unsterblicher
Nachrühm Friedrich August’: Serenata on the Death of Augustus the Strong, TVW
4:7
Simone
Kermes (soprano)
Netta
Ør (soprano)
Lothar
Odinius (tenor)
Marcel
Beekman (tenor)
Stephan
Genz (bass)
Daniel
Ochoa (bass)
Dresdner Kammerchor
Staatskapelle Dresden
Reinhard Goebel (conductor)
Dresden’s
Palm Sunday concerts – this Monday concert was a repeat of the previous night’s
performance – have a distinguished pedigree indeed. Wagner’s performances of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony are the stuff of legend; indeed, it was following
that of 1849 that the itinerant Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin approached
the conductor, announcing: ‘if all music were to be lost in the coming world
conflagration, we should risk our own lives to preserve this symphony’. Shortly
the opera house would be in flames, Bakunin and Wagner heavily involved in the
uprising. Nothing quite so dramatic has ensued in 2014, though perhaps there is
still time.
Since
the Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann acquired their residency at
the Salzburg Easter Festival, that has necessitated a smaller-scale presence in
Dresden over Holy Week, and the decision has been made to explore works from
Dresden’s Baroque heyday. Reinhard Goebel conducted a work which, whilst not
actually written for Dresden, has a strong connection, as a work of mourning
for the Saxon king, Augustus the Strong, by Telemann. An as yet unexplained
peculiarity – not the only one – of the work is that it was written not for
Dresden, but for Hamburg, first performed in May 1733, under the direction of
the composer, most likely with singers from the Hamburg Opera. In an
interesting programme note accompanying the performance, Karl Böhmer speculates
on possible trading and political reasons for Hamburg’s somewhat belated
commemoration; so far, however, as I can ascertain, we do not know.
The
work itself is not a conventional work of mourning. It seems to begin as such,
but soon becomes more of a celebratory commemoration, in the form of one of
those allegorical discussions between Saxony, Time, Majesty, and so on, so
beloved of the Baroque and often so strange to modern ears and minds. The
opening is striking: a lengthy first part to the Sinfonia for trumpets and
kettledrums (here sounding in notably ‘period’ guise) alone. Antiphonally
performed, with groups on either side of the stage, this offered some of the
most funereal music, string eventually joining in not un-Handelian fashion. There
is relative sadness, to both this and the opening chorus, but nothing akin to
what we might have expected from Handel or Purcell, let alone Bach. Telemann
remains competent rather than inspired.
The
relative simplicity of the music was not matched, however, by Goebel’s flailing
around: often a distraction, though a distraction the orchestra generally
seemed to ignore. Likewise apparent attempts to have the strings withdraw
vibrato and so on: they worked for a while, then we heard something closer to
the deep and richly toned Staatskapelle Dresden we know and love. Obbligato
instruments took the best of their opportunities to shine, for instance a
fruity bassoon in the aria of ‘Die Zeit’, ‘Ich stürze die irdischen Götter vom
Throne’, a relatively – here a constant qualification – furious number. String
echoes of Saxony’s voice in ‘Das Inbegriff von meiner Erden’ were nicely done:
attractive in sub-Purcellian fashion. Likewise the string swagger of ‘Prange
nur, auf stölzen Hügeln’, from ‘Die Majestät’.It was striking, moreover, to
hear clarinets in music of this vintage, the pair of instruments in ‘Des
Friedens holde Stille’ bubbling away in rather a lovely vein.
The
extraordinary aspect of this performance, however, was the contribution of
Simone Kermes (Sachsen). Anything but funereal, she sported something akin to
an eighteenth-century sky-blue apotheosis of a dress, mysteriously cut away at
the front. Much of her singing seemed to fit her outfit rather than Telemann’s
serenata. Something approaching hysteria was reached in her first number, but
it was only at the end that something more akin to sexual ecstasy seemed to
have been reached. Clearly there is great vocal facility here, but for those of
us who find the likes of Cecilia Bartoli unbearably mannered, this was
something else again: closer to performance art than performance. That might
not matter so much, did it not prevent Kermes from sustaining a line.
Otherwise, the soloists were more conventional. Lothar Odinius nodded somewhat
– if less so – towards camp, but the rest, one was grateful, played it
straight. Especially impressive to my mind was Daniel Ochman (Die Grossmut),
who even managed to deliver lengthy accompagnato
recitative with great conviction and musicality, rewarded with a tuneful, again
quasi-Handelian aria, ‘Die Macht zum Gebieten und Schrecken besitzen’. It was
something of a relief to hear the four-part protestation, ‘Nein, rühme dich nur
keener Güte’; recitative-aria etc. can become quite wearisome when the music is
less than top-notch. The chorus of Saxon inhabitants does not have much to do,
but did it well. In the final chorus, I was a little surprised by Goebel’s
grandiloquent closing ritardando:
just the sort of thing he and his ilk for which used to take performers of the
past to task. Whatever the ‘authenticity’ or otherwise, it worked – as did this
interesting performance as a whole.
