Salzburg Festival (6) – Kopatchinskaja and friends: Bartók, Kurtág, and Mozart, 25 August 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Bartók: Rhapsody no.2 for violin and piano, Sz 89
Kurtág: Selection from Játekók and Jelek, játekók és üzenetek; Kafka-Fragmente, op.24: ‘Ruhelos’
Bartók: 44 Duos for two violins, Sz 98: ‘Szól a duda’; Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano, Sz 111
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet, KV 581

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Jonian Ilias Kadesha (violins)

Lawrence Power (viola)

Sol Gabetta (cello)

Reto Bieri (clarinet)

Olga Pashchenko (piano)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

The second of my ‘Hommage à Kurtág’ concerts proved in more than one sense a concert of two unequal halves, a scintillating selection from Bartók and Kurtág followed by a bizarre, if mercifully shorter, mauling of Mozart that would have been better left unimagined, let alone performed. In its violin and piano version, Bartók’s Second Rhapsody imparted a curious, welcome sense in its first movement of first being heard from a slight distance, quickly coming into focus, as if the players had drawn physically nearer to us. (They had not moved at all, at least in position.) Pianist Olga Pashchenko and violinist-cum-animating-presence Patricia Kopatchinskaja proved animated guides, the former’s shading of post-Romantic tone as absorbing as the ghostly echoes of the latter. Dancing, revelry, and other wildness characterised a whirlwind second movement of considerable ferocity. 

The duo joined by violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha, violist Lawrence Power, and cellist Sol Gabetta, we heard a selection of piano pieces from Kurtág’s Jatekók and string solo and trio pieces from another of the composer’s collections, Jelek, játekók és üzenetek (‘Signs, games, and messages’). ‘Hommage à Kurtag Marta’ functioned almost as if a Bach prelude from the 48, inviting and of course in this case remembering, followed by a haunting ‘ … féerie d’automne’ from Kadesha. ‘Ligatura Y’ for string trio suggested music not only for but by strings, sound and its organisation seemingly arising from the instruments themselves, however strong the illusion—and strong it was indeed. Power’s solo viola ‘In Nomine – all’ongherese’ was eloquent, rich, thoroughly absorbing, from which Pashchenko’s return in ‘… lehullot levelek’ stemmed with unforced inevitability, kinship within Kurtág’s œuvre as keenly perceived as that with his composer colleagues. ‘Népdalféle’ (Kadesha) and ‘Fanfárok’ (Paschchenko) led to an intense ‘Jelek VI’ for string trio (Kopatchnskaja, Power, Gabetta), its rests as musical and overwhelming as its notes, Webern’s ghost still an honoured guest at the feast. Kadesha’s ‘Hommage à J.S.B.’ suggested Bach writing in the style of Kurtág rather than vice versa, a second, piano piece of the same name over in a flash. Gabetta’s solo ‘Az hit …’ (actually a transcription from a soprano original) was as richly eloquent as Power’s viola solo, kinship again fruitfully acknowledged. 

The Prelude and Waltz from the first book of Játekók and a dancing string tio ‘Hommage à Ránki György’, fresh from the tavern led us to a changing of the guard in Kopatchinskaja’s party piece ‘Ruhelos’ and a Bartók duo reimagined so as to involve all players, Bieri included, in a captivating piece of bagpiped music theatre. Contrasts, from Bieri, Kopatchinskaja, and Pashchenko, seemed to create a world before our ears and express its essence similarly before us. If there were inevitable echoes of other worlds from rural Hungary to nightclub blues, especially in the first movement, this could only ever have been Bartók. The initial, rapt stillness that yet moved of the central movement ran deep in a detailed performance whose impassioned outburst both surprised and yet confirmed. Organised delirium, to borrow from the Boulezian future, characterised an infectious third movement, chamber-music give-and-take ever new and rooted. 

If only that had carried through into the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. To be fair, chemistry in the expanded ensemble was equally palpable. What a pity, then, that it was so misapplied, Kopatchinskaja and Bieri apparently leading the show. The first movement begin oddly sotto voce, as if founded on a need to make Mozart sound ‘like’ Kurtág on the surface, rather than explore what kinship might lie within. I suspect that was the ‘idea’, but in practice, the complete lack of line throughout the entire piece would have made equal nonsense of Kurtág—or Bartók. In fact, what we heard sounded more akin to a caricature of the already self-caricatured Nikolas Harnoncourt, with strange pieces of 1960s music theatre thrown in for no apparent reason. I found myself wanting to cry out: ‘could you just calm down and let Mozart speak, preferably sing?’ There were odd sources of light, still mannered, but at least vaguely coherent, such as the first movement’s development section, but alas few and far between. The third movement came off best, the minuet relatively mainstream in conception and all the better for it, although both trios were more odd than anything else, the first seemingly wanting to be Beethoven, the second Haydn, Mozart nowhere to be found. Much of the finale sounded as if it had been turned inside out with choppy phrasing, perverse emphases, and unfathomable tempi.

Salzburg Festival (5) - Ariadne auf Naxos, 24 August 2026

Haus für Mozart

Images: © SF/Thomas Aurin

Composer – Kate Lindsey
Primadonna, Ariadne – Christina Nilsson
Tenor, Bacchus – Eric Cutler
Zerbinetta – Ziyi Dai
Major-domo – Johannes Silberschneider
Music Master – Christoph Pohl
Dancing Master – Jonas Hacker
Harlequin – Leon Košavić
Scaramuccio – Michael Porter
Truffaldino – Lukas Enoch Lemcke
Brighella – Theodor Browne
Naiad – Jasmin Delfs
Driad – Ana Mittermüller
Echo – Marlene Metzger
Wigmaker – Blaž Stajnko
Lackey – Fabian-Jakob Balkhausen
Officer – Fabio Dorizzi
Dancers – Ashley Elexandra Wright, Yume Takojima, Anton Ruslanovych, Samuel Young-Wright
Actors – Leo Albertini, Maximilian Montag, Martin Preiner, Paridam Schneider, Christian Walker

Director, designs, costumes – Ersan Mondtag
Lighting – Franck Evin
Choreography – Ashley Alexandra Wright
Video – Alexander Pannier
Dramaturgy – Till Briegleb

Assistant designer – Lorenz Paul Stöger  

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Manfred Honeck (conductor)

A musically outstanding Ariadne auf Naxos, as well played as any I have heard, was here alas let down by a frankly idiotic staging, directed by the recently fashionable ‘interdisciplinary artist’ Ersan Mondtag. Let me resume the good musical news, which was very good indeed. I am not sure I had heard Manfred Honeck conduct an opera before, although in addition to serving as Music Director in Stuttgart for several years, he will have played in many as a violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic, here led by his brother Rainer. Doubtless it did no harm to be ‘one of them’, for the musicians clearly trusted and responded to him as they would to few others, combining a sense of chamber music writ large with unassuming yet unquestionable musical flexibility and direction. Harmony and counterpoint combined in near-Mozartian balance in an orchestra of soloists. Rarely if ever have I heard so much of the score, inner string parts in particular: not simply for its own sake, but musically and thereby dramatically enriching the drama. Tristan in particular could be heard informing various passages of the Opera proper: not only in the obvious, intertextual ways, but in those string textures, their direction, and their potentiality. This may not have been a brazenly modernistic Strauss, but then this is a particular work with its own brand of neoclassicism avant la lettre: one rooted in, yet in no sense hidebound by, tradition, and with frames of historical reference in almost any direction one might care to take, not least what we call the French Baroque (though ‘Classicism’ arguably makes greater sense). I can pay Honeck’s direction no greater compliment than to say I should love to hear him in a Mozart or Wagner opera, or indeed more Strauss. And if he can encourage this orchestra to play like that, he should definitely conduct more opera in Salzburg and Vienna.

 

With this of all operas, we need to keep several operatic balls in the air at the same time, and show ourselves to be doing so. Whatever nonsense they were called to by the director, the singers shone vocally bright indeed. Christina Nilsson, served particularly ill by Mondtag’s designs, nevertheless offered a thoughtful, radiant performance as Ariadne. At one point, I found myself wondering wishing the late Jessye Norman had been cast, in order to put the production where it deserved, but otherwise I was more than happy with her successor. Ziyi Da was a delight from beginning to end as Zerbinetta, her coloratura responding perfectly to the needs of a drama both necessarily italicised and natural. If I have heard a better Music Master than Christoph Pohl, I have forgotten him, which seems unlikely. A warmly Wagnerian baritone, with just the right amount of ironic distance, sounded just what Hofmannsthal and Strauss had ordered. If it is difficult to wax too lyrical about a Bacchus, that reflects the thanklessness of the role; Eric Cutler did all that was asked for him and more. Jonas Hacker’S Dancing Master, Leon Košavić’s Harlequin, the euphonious trio of Jasmin Delfs, Ana Mittermüller, and Marlene Metzger: these and others all attested to casting from depth, repaid in intelligence, good humour, and tonal warmth. A host of dancers and actors did well what presumably had been asked of them too.

 

I have left to the end Kate Lindsey’s Composer, not because she proved an exception, but because her character, alas, leads us directly to Mondtag’s staging. If, to begin with, I found her singing a touch on the harsh side, it blossomed into one of the most moving accounts of Strauss’s paean to music I have heard. It is one of those unmistakeable moments when the master of musical masks lets his slip, or at least has us think it does, and had me in tears. (The Vienna Philharmonic was at least an equal partner here of course.) But the reason, I suspect, I had taken longer to warm to her performance was that she had been landed with having to play the Composer not as a successor to Cherubino, but rather as a strangely dressed, ‘uptight’ middle-aged woman with a twitch. In offering what she did, Lindsey probably did precisely what had been asked for, prior to casting caution to the winds. That was not the worst of it, by any means. In what came across, rightly or wrongly, as crass misogyny, this woman was enabled, during the Opera, to ‘loosen up’ with the aid of a spliff or two, Zerbinetta removing the Composer’s top so that she could wander haplessly around the stage in her bra, prior to tentatively joining in one of the most tedious all-in orgies you will ever have the misfortune to observe. ‘Großmächtige Prinzessin…’ was sung to the Composer, not Ariadne, who had vanished.

The attempt, as New Labour might have had it, to sex up Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s dodgy dossier was often embarrassing, but always dull and increasingly so. Where the Prologue’s setting, on a spaceship flown to Mars, with a variety of peculiarly dressed people, had merely irritated but had not especially got in the way, the Opera suggested a supreme lack of interest on the part of the production team in anything remotely connected with the work, let alone its musical and verbal text. Characters from the Prologue wandered around to no particular end, as if in search of a bus that alas was never coming. Curiously joyless sex, with a bias towards revelation of the male form, carried on throughout. For some reason or none, Zerbinetta and her troupe either – according to taste – took the controls of the spaceship or engaged in a television quiz show. 

Finally, Bacchus arrived as a golden spaceman, to leave with Ariadne, only to have the Major-Domo press a button and explode their ship: closing fireworks of a sort, I suppose, though it felt unmotivated. If the argument, as seemed suggested in the dramaturge’s programme note, were that this was offering a contemporary critique of artistic patronage, it failed in its aim, let alone in presenting any idea, Strauss’s, Hofmannsthal’s, or anyone else’s, of transformation. But if that were being offered, perhaps some consideration might have been given to which version of the opera would be presented. Only a little better thought out than the production, this note gave the impression of not even having appreciated this was an issue, referring baldly to the ‘premiere’ in Vienna in 1916. Sebastian Bolz’s accompanying essay was, by contrast, excellent: a model introduction to the work. 

As the celebrated Turkish proverb has it, when a clown moves into a palace, he does not become the sultan; the palace becomes a circus. I suspect the production team would claim their work was ‘about’ this relationship rather than simple evidence of it. There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with a circus or the idea of one, though it is hardly to be equated to the commedia dell’arte. It is not, though, suited to everything—especially when it never leaves the shallows of a mere ‘look’. Achim Freyer’s (almost) one-size-all approach could become wearing, but there was no doubting his craft, his pursuit of an idea, his ability to conjure up a new world within the confines of his aesthetic, and the theatrical magic he could, at his best, create. His Magic Flute, which I saw for the first time here in Salzburg in 1999, was a case in point: perhaps still the most memorable and magical I have seen. If you have never seen so much as a still from a low-budget 70s sci-fi series and would happily see it irrelevantly created on stage, seasoned with a torrent of aimless dry-humping observed by an occasional refugee from the land of Teletubbies, Zirkus Mondtagi will decamp next summer to Bayreuth for Big Top Parsifal.

Salzburg Festival (4) - Saint François d’Assise, 23 August 2026

Felsenreitschule

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus

The Angel – Lauranne Oliva
Saint François – Philippe Sly
The Leper – Sean Panikkar
Brother Léon – Russell Braun
Brother Massée – Léo Vermot-Desroches
Brother Élie – Aaron-Casey Gould
Brother Bernard – Willard White
Brother Sylvestre – Marius Aron
Brother Rufin – Ivan Lyvch

Saint Francis’s father – Ingo Arbeiter
Saint Francis’s mother – Ingeborg Haidinger
Leper (actor) – Georg Schwamberger

Angels – Eirck Godoy, Ilaria Quaglia, Nicholas Sambou, Davide Troiani, Lisa Vilret, Sebastian Zamaro
Brothers – Felix Chang, Antoine Effroy, Nikos Fragkou, Emanuele Ospelt, Davide Sportelli, Emile Wendt

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera (chorus director: Jozef Chabroň)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Salzburg’s new Saint François d’Assise, directed by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Maxime Pascal, with Philippe Sly in the title role, single-handedly justifies the somewhat mixed operatic results of Markus Hinterhäuser’s now concluded intendancy. This was an event, an experience not only of the highest, most challenging artistic order, but extended beyond that, building to a transcendental encounter in the third act that I am sure will remain with those who underwent, no participated in, it for the rest of their lives. That is in large part a matter of the work, of course, Messiaen’s avowed summa; or rather, the work was an indispensable fons et origo for it. But the palpable ambition, commitment and – doubtless in various forms – belief shown from all concerned were equally crucial. Taking steps, as it does, not merely beyond the at-best wonderful, yet also too-often-infuriating aesthetic of opera, but beyond Wagner’s renewal of Attic tragedy and Schoenberg’s theological transformation of Wagnerian music drama, to an opera that arguably belongs less in our opera houses even than Parsifal or Moses und Aron, and yet in its rebuke and challenges alike to them helps justify their continued existence and promise them new life, Saint François may be a one-off, but it is an absolutely necessary one-off. More to the point, it felt and, quite simply, was so here, an inspired contribution to the eight-hundredth anniversary of St Francis’s death, as well as a crucial demonstration of what art, religion, and humanity can and must do if they are to survive—and to be worthy of survival. 

The total commitment of Sly’s performance in its physical extremity as well as its astounding musical range was foremost among the wonders experienced. Call it inspiration, call it faith, call it what you will: here was an artist responding to and creating something extraordinary—in tandem with his fellow artists and the work itself. Lauranne Oliva’s Angel was a voice and presence of radiant clarity, as unanswerable and unknowable as the place from which (s)he had come. Russell Braun’s beautifully sung Brother Leo offered a more attainable or at least approachable example, imploring and certain in faith, ineffably human as, like the rest of the brothers, he sought the way. Willard White’s Brother Bernard imparted a striking, equally touching voice of older faith. All presented voices and faces of a community, a path, that connected us to the world of saints, angels, and divinity. 

The opening of Castellucci’s staging offered a frame closer to more typical contemporary opera as anything we should proceed to see (or hear), but quite rightly one soon forgotten, even discarded. In a museum – yes, our museum of musical works – the young Francis was called to leave all behind: his fine clothes, art, family (his father reappearing briefly in the final scene, but no longer in any sense the focus) himself to begin the route to the beyond: first beyond society, even beyond established monasticism, and ultimately Beyond. Shedding his fine clothes, as did the historical Francis, he was born anew, as were his followers, in a water both of baptism and of, straightforwardly, elemental water, pouring from the ceiling and, in one of many striking images of Castelluccian installation-drama, apparently petrified, water emerging miraculously as if from a fountain. Brothers, singers and dancers alike, joined him, likewise losing all, one shaved onstage, in the promise of gaining all—through a life of obedience, prayer, belief, charity, and art that is heavenly rather than temporal. Such is no easy path, of course, and only Francis could truly take on the ultimate challenge, that of Christ’s Cross, but others would participate as they could: whether in baking bread during Lauds in onstage ovens, its unmistakeable aroma inviting us to the refectory for physical interval sustenance; in receiving the Angel and its questions about predestination; in accepting not only the Leper, but his leprosy as part of God’s creation, a blow against Cathar and other heresy; in wandering, even wallowing in a mud, a filth as far removed from Francis’s fine origins as could be imagined; and of course with the birds and other of God’s creatures (all featured at different points onstage: wolf (of Gubbio), bird, and sacrificial lambs, as well as representations). 

There was much more, yet nothing was hurried, the production taking its necessary time as did the musical performance. If some of the visual displays might have worked better, ironically, in a museum – a giant picture, for instance, of a child regaining the ability to hear – then many others were deeply touching, not least a confession to which it was difficult not to assent, quasi-heretically, in artistic communion: ‘Je t’aime, Olivier, immense artiste’. The birds in Francis’s sermon took on new, tragic meaning when shown, both onstage as near death and on screen in funerary naming, in reference to the ecological devastation of our age. But for the most part, the preaching was not Castelucci’s, or ours, but that of Francis and perhaps something lying beyond even him. This was not a place for argument, for discussion, but for mystery and for truth. We could recognise that more readily, however strenuous the demand, in the acceptance of the leper (acted by an old man, apparently wasted away, yet sung and doubled already by an angelic Sean Panikkar in white), mirrored towards the close when the latter returned to wash Francis on his way to the beyond. The ravishing beauty of Panikkar’s singing added further levels of theological as well as dramatic understanding, as of course did the Vienna Philharmonic’s celestial invitation (and those of the ondes Martenot, played by Nathalie Forget, Augustin Viard, and Cécile Lartigau). The image of Panikkar as angelic leper emanation, to borrow slightly from Stockhausen, kneading together Francis and physical Leper under a cloth for them to emerge in quasi-communion, even quasi-transubstantiated, as living counterpart to the bread whose baking (and oven steam) similarly pervaded the Felsenreitschule, made perfect liturgical sense in the moment—a key condition, of course, for any form of liturgical acceptance, not necessarily to be expected out of context. Ritual lived, brought to life, and yet, as with Our Lord, ultimately pointed to death—and thereafter resurrection. 

For later, in the stigmata scene, we were unmistakeably in the world of dark mysteries it was and could not be given to us to understand. As with Francis, we must simply submit. A chill orchestral wind summoned by Pascal and the orchestra both formed a foundation for and intensified the dark images onstage, all having changed as we approached the beginning of the end. In dance, image, and music, it might almost have been a black (or better, dark) mass, a reminder that true sacrilege may closer approach – an essential term here – the sacred than so much of our banal, daily lives, ‘religious’ or ‘secular’. Not everything, here as in art and religion more generally, was necessarily to be understood or experienced representationally. Was that apparently sacramental mound from which so much dirt and darkness came anything of the kind? Did it summon the grave later to be dug by skeletal figures, one of them Francis? Or were these the wrong questions to ask, evidence that we had not yet been called? Red may have signalled blood; it may simply, joyously, agonisingly, have been red (to synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes alike). Angel wings were surely, though, on at least one level what they seemed to be: providing, and of Providence, something towards which Francis, once further shorn of strength and submitted to those dark figures (of Hell?) could reach, ultimately to join a company of Heaven that may have been easier, or at least less impossible, for Francis’s mediaeval mind than ours to grasp. 

And yet, this is a work of modernity, a singular version no doubt, but no less modern for that. Messiaen engaged with the newest as well as the oldest music; he instructed many of its composers, as well as writing it himself. Pascal left us in no doubt he head internalised this musical language, its capabilities, and its emotions, to bring it, like Francis – and us – to new life. Birds, for Messiaen God’s finest musicians, sang more clearly than all, uninhibited, acting from their essence, knowing no other. This we heard from all sections of the orchestra, gamelan-percussion in near-surround sound included. Counterpoint and harmony mesmerised as Creation itself returned to life. But there was more to it than that single miracle. There was existential dread, harmonic and timbral; there was radiant, human joy; there was a new sense of time; there was the Angel’s unearthly viol. Ultimately, there was the coming together of all, in orchestral and choral divine encounter, an experience so overwhelming one felt one had actually met God. That did not happen by itself, through mere grace, for this was still art: the work had been prepared, paced, and permitted to speak for itself in its succession of tableaux. Its inevitability, though, was undeniable. In the numinous, astonishing, overwhelming closing bars, instruments, creatures, alleluias, and other songs of praise resounding, we came together as the angels had promised Francis: poetry and music leading us, as with Bach, to God Himself. This is not the only thing opera or art can and should do; but it felt, for many hours after, that it might (yet) be the most important.

Salzburg Festival (3) - ‘Hommage à Kurtág’: Brahms, Kurtág, Schumann, and Ligeti, 22 August 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Brahms: Trio for violin, horn, and piano, in E-flat major, op.40
Kurtág: Hommage à R.Sch. for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.15d
Schumann: Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.132
Ligeti: Trio for violin, horn, and piano

Noah Bendix-Bagley (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Daniel Ottensamer (clarinet)

Stefan Dohr (horn)

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

This is what I call programming. Kirill Gerstein essentially brought together two unusual chamber ensembles, him common to both, to perform works by two celebrated pairs of composers: contemporary master and disciple (though more complicated than that) themselves in some sense responding to their predecessors. Joined by Noah Bendix-Bagley and Stefan Dohr for the Brahms and Ligeti for violin, horn, and piano, and by Tabea Zimmermann and Daniel Ottensamer for works by Kurtág and Schumann, Gerstein wrought a moving centenary tribute to György Kurtág, whose life and work in many ways offer a conspectus of the Western classical tradition, such as one would only find at a festival such as Salzburg’s. 

For the Brahms Horn Trio, opening balance sounded a little odd, or perhaps it was more a matter of my ears adjusting. At any rate, this was a fine performance of a work with nowhere to hide—and no reason to need such a place. The first movement’s metrical and harmonic ambiguities offer difficulties for players and listeners alike, but there was no problem at all on the former side. This is difficult music and should never be thought easy listening, but these were musicians who enabled form to emerge as emotional as well as structural progression. The scherzo came to life as an ebullient, even disturbing homage to Mozart and Beethoven, wild in its Brahmsian discipline and in the occasional hint, never realised, that such discipline might be overruled. Its trio offered darkly Romantic balance and, within, a new world of chiaroscuro, prior to a still more intense reprise of the scherzo. The slow movement was darkly introspective to begin with, developing into defiance rather than merely stating it, whether outwardly fragile or overtly impassioned. More than once, I could not help but notice affinities with Die Walküre, its material as well as its mood. (I must consult the score for myself.) The sense of musical ‘lighting’ – slightly different, I think from shading – offered by all three players was exquisitely expressive, founded in yet never to be reduced to harmonic motion. The release of the finale was no less felt, or more remarkable, for its complexity, striking a keen balance between hints of the cyclical and the developing variation that is the essence of so much Brahms. Here was the culmination of a mighty river’s flow. 

Kurtág’s Hommage à R.Sch. brought the ‘other’ ensemble onstage. The first miniature, ‘(merkwürdige Pirouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler)‘ created a scurrying theatre stage of the mind, unmistakeably in the line of Webern, but equally unmistakeably Kurtág. Semi-whispered, hyper-Romantic confidences in the second effected a beautifully moving synthesis at the close, to be disrupted immediately by Florestan/Schoenberg’s third, equally beautiful in Pierrot-like violence, and further balanced or rather sublated in fourth and fifths movement in which semi-return to the mood of the second was, in nicely Schumannesque fashion, complicated by helter-skelter response. The sixth movement, longer than the first five combined, though still relatively brief, brought a properly Kurtágian haunting in response to Pierrot’s comings and goings, crystalline perfection in work and performance the means to emotional and intellectual integrity and depth. This was the air and indeed landscape of another planet, our revels ending with the unshowiest, yet most certain of drumstrokes from Ottensamer: a soldier’s tale, perhaps. 

After the interval, Gerstein, Zimmermann, and Ottensamer returned for Schumann’s late Märchenerzählungen, the first in context offering a whimsy not unrelated to Kurtág’s. This was unmistakeably a fairy tale opening, the page turned: ‘once upon a time…’, the story told with palpable delight from all concerned, and in as ultimately harmonious a world we can imagine this side of Mozart. Its successor proved similarly touching: this may not be music ‘for children’, but there seemed little doubt they would like and ‘get’ it. The rapt euphony of the third piece was also touching in its simplicity. (Again, few composers after Mozart have had that gift, although Kurtág does.) It brought tears to my eyes. Similarly good-humoured, the fourth and final tale was more overtly fantastical, even Hoffmannesque—which returned us to Kurtág and his homage. 

For the Ligeti Trio, the players seemed more immediately at ease than in the Brahms, their instruments ‘speaking’ and indeed singing eloquently from the off. If any other composer occasionally came to mind, it was first Berg (especially on violin), later Bartók (especially on piano); but in reality it could have been none other than Ligeti—and ‘late’ Ligeti at that.  Every note and every relationship between them enchanted as strongly as Schumann’s or Kurtág’s. Such Mozartian ease with such unusual forces announced in the first movement continued throughout all four, the second offering a riveting walk on the post-Bartókian wildside. Bendix-Balgley’s harmonics, Dohr’s contrapuntal lines, Gerstein’s well, everything combined to mesmerise. Talk about having rhythm, Ligeti included—and harmonic rhythm just as much. The third movement sounded at first as if a response to an imagined Schumann march, before pursuing other, very different, though not less fantastical paths in a directness that again suggested the smiling ghost of Bartók. And if hearing this work in the same concert as Brahms’s Trio for the same forces rightly brought difference rather than kinship more strongly to the fore, there was an undeniable Brahms-like satisfaction in what we heard here, ever more so in the final movement: simply itself and unanswerable. Bells tolled for someone or something: maybe for us. If so, the composer of Le Grand Macabre might have reminded us that it would not have been the first time we had failed to notice.

Salzburg Festival (2) - Hadelich/VPO/Thielemann: Brahms, 22 August 2026

Grosses Festspielhaus

Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68

Augustin Hadelich (violin)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images:© SF/Marco Borrelli

A frustrating concert, this: on account of neither Augustin Hadelich nor the Vienna Philharmonic, but rather of Christian Thielemann’s conducting, which certainly had its moments, its passages even, yet could readily have offered much more. Consistency can over over- and underrated: no one wants consistent mediocrity and the twin curiosity and courage not to rest on laurels and thus to try something different are often to be lauded. Proof of the pudding lies in the eating, though, and difference for its own sake will rarely be a good thing. Here, above all in the First Symphony, a strange eschewal of harmonic rhythm, tracing Brahms – of all composers – at worst as if this music were merely a succession of melodies and at best in a fashion born more of operatic than symphonic drama, culminating in a strange two-movement dash to the finish, as if Thielemann had simply had enough, fell some way short of the deep, intense satisfaction that is this composer’s wont. If it would be unjust to speculate that his mind might have been in Bayreuth, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that his heart was. 

I shall return to the Symphony. The Violin Concerto offered better news, although that was mostly Hadelich and the orchestra’s doing, Thielemann showing himself an able, sensitive accompanist rather than equal partner. How much can one tell from an opening phrase and, more broadly, an opening tutti? Here, quite a bit: it was rhetorical, theatrical even, something of a curtain-raiser, without really leading to what the curtain might reveal on Hadelich’s entry. Throughout, all in Hadelich’s interpretation felt born in the notes, in their connection, and what that created, constituting the work’s form as both structure and emotional fabric. Hadelich’s golden tone, variegated yet centred, harked back to a mythical yet enduring idea of a Golden Age of violin playing, intriguingly set against a somewhat darker toned VPO (not something one especially associates with that orchestra). Thielemann proved ever attentive, visibly and audibly listening and responding, yet rarely assertive, as will often, ideally, be called for; and when it was, skirting slight mannerism. It was telling, no doubt, that the truest instrumental drama came in the cadenza: not one I recognised—I wonder whether it was Hadelich’s own. At any rate, it learned lessons from celebrated predecessors, whilst treading its own path with confidence and genuine rejuvenation. The way Hadelich built tension through counterpoint that became harmony, extending Brahms both as himself and as a true disciple of Bach, was invigorating, yet pointed to an apparent lack of harmonic interest on Thielemann’s part. It was not grievous; one hears far, far worse, especially from the ‘authentic’ brigade, but something was missing, if here more by way of contrast. It was Hadelich, doubtless rightly, but perhaps to an undue extent, who gave the impression of inviting the orchestra back in. 

Wind playing – not only the oboist’s, though certainly his – of the highest distinction marked the second movement. There was a definite lateness without mawkishness to this ‘Adagio’: a heartfelt tribute and even a farewell to a Classicism that underlay all and yet was no longer quite within reach. That beautiful yet melancholy thought elicited string (solo and section) consolation before darkness emerged beneath the surface. This, then, was truly a movement of Romantic anguish, born from within rather than applied to it. Hadelich’s song – and how his violin sang – was an achievement rather than a given, however little it lay in doubt. Thielemann imparted a strong sense of what might have been—in more than one sense. A strong turnout from the Phlegm Liberation Front notwithstanding, Brahms ultimately won out in a finale launched with little rather than no break. It may have been a matter of where I was seated, but early on the VPO’s tone sounded oddly harsh here. Transitions and other shifts were generally well handled, but ultimately this was a movement (for me) more observed than shared—again, largely on Thielemann’s account. For an encore, Hadelich gave what I believe to be his own arrangement of Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’: unfussy, resourceful, and closing on magical harmonics. 

Thielemann initially seemed more obviously at home in the Symphony, conducting from memory and shaping the opening of the first movement into a compelling, if not truly harmonically founded, drama. (The greatest Brahms conductors from Furtwängler and Klemperer to Barenboim would immediately show what was missing.) A palpable sense of tragic narrative was present, though, whatever slight reservations one might have felt. A strange noise from within the audience – electronic interference? – disrupted a little, but orchestra, composer, and, here at least, conductor emerged victorious from that tussle. Had the performance continued in similar terms, one might well have located it broadly as lying within the tradition of Karajan—and there are far worse things than that. Hints of motivic Beethoven towards the close already suggested, though, a little of what else might have been underplayed earlier. There was, though, undeniable eloquence to the second movement, not least through the way the orchestra ‘spoke’—again, perhaps a little operatic, but there is more than enough room for different approaches here. The emotional ambivalence of its opening well established the contest to come, even if overall tone was a little on the bright side for Brahms (at least to my taste). 

Following a further barrage of coughing, the third movement began at a tempo that felt faster than any I could recall. If it was difficult objectively to square with ‘Un poco Allegretto e grazioso’, it had its own logic in lifting of mood and proved surprisingly convincing—until textures became more congested than flowing. Its later course, though, was straightforwardly odd: slowing massively and ending in perplexing disappointment. The finale likewise began well enough, laying out its material clearly and bringing an undeniable sense of suspense. That horn call was all one could wish for, and the principal theme sounded beautifully, if in oddly soft focus. ‘Più Allegro’, though? It was certainly più, but to my ears considerably troppo. What ensued was driven in a way one might have thought – hoped – had gone out of fashion with Toscanini, albeit without his preparation and aesthetic. Harmonic understanding and communication seemed to have gone out of the window in order to catch the next train home.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Der Prinz von Homburg, 20 August 2026

Felsenreitschule

(concert performance)

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg - Maximilian Schmitt
The Electress – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Princess Natalie of Orange – Kathrin Zukowski
Field Marshal Dörfling – Lauri Vasar
Frederick Arthur, Prince of Homburg – Georg Nigl
Colonel Kottwitz – Anthony Robin Schneider
Count Hohenzollern – Magnus Dietrich
First Officer – Konstantin Igl
Second Officer – Gabriel Rollinson
Third Officer – Philipp Schöllhorn
First Lady of the Court – Hanna Park
Second Lady of the Court – Freya Apffelstaedt
Third Lady of the Court – Brigitta Listra
Sergeant, Second Orderly – Marcel Durka
First Orderly – Johannes Bamberger

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Mention, let alone celebration, of Hans Werner Henze’s centenary has proved surprisingly muted, if not entirely unmarked—at least in continental Europe. Simon Rattle, a longstanding advocate, has given performances of Henze’s oratorio The Raft of the Medusa with his new orchestra in Munich, following on from an outstanding performance here in Salzburg last summer. Munich, long an important centre for Henze performance, saw a new staging of The English Cat by the Bavarian State Opera over the winter of 2025-6, so strictly not a new production this year, although close to being so. El Cimarrón, a scenic music theatre piece rather than an opera, has been given in Rome, Aix-en-Provence, and the composer’s birthplace, the small Westphalian city of Gütersloh. By and large, though, opera and symphonic performances have proved little less frequent than usual over the past decade, which is to say strikingly less frequent than during his lifetime. 

Whilst it was difficult not to feel a certain disappointment at the Salzburg Festival’s decision to give Der Prinz von Homburg in a single concert performance – sold out, be it noted – rather than a full staging, we should still be grateful for this celebration of the twin centenaries of Hans Werner Henze and Ingeborg Bachmann, born but six days apart in 1926. Theirs was a fruitful partnership extending over roughly a decade, beginning in 1955 with the composer’s provision of incidental music for Bachmann’s radio play Die Zikaden, its German narrator having fled to an Italian island. (Both Henze and Bachmann had taken that road south too.) A crucial context for this opera, the first of two, was the 1957 song-cycle Nachtstücke und Arien, with which Henze, with typical theatricality, staged his separation from an avant-garde of which he had never really been part in the first place. (One should be wary of his accounts of what happened, but that in part makes them all the more valuable aesthetically. Yet, as so often with Henze, the more he voiced his dissociation from German art, the more he also found himself drawn to it. Kleist’s play Prinz Friedrich von Homburg had achieved and, in a sense, suffered great popularity during both the Second Reich and the Third, and thus stood potentially as tainted for Henze and Bachmann as German Romantic music, especially when dealing with a German stage and audience. That held, almost irrespective of the aesthetic admiration its recreators both felt. The effort, then, in this opera not to be German is palpable, doomed, and fascinating—which is not to say that it is only German. (What is, or would wish to be? Pfitzner, perhaps, and probably not.) 

The conflicts at work in the score, not only mirroring but extending and intensifying those in the libretto came through strongly in this account from the ORF Symphony Orchestra, Ingo Metzmacher, and a distinguished cast. If I felt occasional passages of softer focus earlier on, I think that was in part a matter of listening my way in and also in part also a reflection of Henze’s writing. After all, in In his own words, ‘Der Prinz von Homburg … sets itself against the blind unimaginative application of laws, in favour of an exaltation of human kindness, an understanding of which reaches into deeper and more complex realms than would be “normal” and which seeks to find a place for a man in this world even though he is a Schwärmer and a dreamer, or perhaps because of that.’ There is a distinctive basic sound-world to the opera, blueish in hue, which takes on and sublimates, even to an extent pacifies the militarism one might expect. There is also certainly a strange dream-world that extends from that, heading the cantata Being Beauteous of a few years later, yet nonetheless shaped in trauma by what has gone before: politically, aesthetically, and perhaps ethically too. 

To present march rhythms on the harp, for instance, rather than trumpets and drums, seemed a statement, an act of hostility towards authorities that had brought the world to war in drama as on earth, and might do so again—heightened by the sense of aesthetic persecution the composer himself undoubtedly, if exaggeratedly, felt for himself: cursed, as it were, to be a German composer, however much he may have wished it otherwise. If the orchestra often seemed driven, perhaps by Metzmacher, to tilt the scales, as did Henze and Bachmann, away from unwanted inheritance, in this case towards Stravinsky, victory ebbed away as soon as it was achieved—just as on the battlefield. If the strangely muted world of interiority took longer to become dramatically compelling, there is arguably point to that, both in work and in performance, Whether there is stylistic resolution or even quite coherence becomes a more pressing issue without staging; eclecticism can be too readily condemned, but also too readily celebrated. When, at its best, stylistic conflict is put to dramatic use, one heard it all the more readily. Registering with ever greater immediacy was Henze’s inner conflict between Schoenberg and Stravinsky – the Symphony in Three Movements and ‘whiter’ ballets sometimes too close for comfort – alleged determinism and freedom, calculation and dreams, depth and beauty, and so on registered with increasing power. 

So too did, if less in the guise of a mediating power then humanistic intervention, understanding of the Prince of Homburg as a strange, postwar (even in war) Wozzeck-, even Christ-figure in a heterodox passion of sorts. If a concert performance could less readily convey than full staging quite who the characters on stage all were, more musical patterns could suggest something of that narrative—arguably more strongly than the work itself warrants, mind and ear compensating in unusual ways. Georg Nigl’s Prince took on the contradictions and struggles – the Prince’s and Henze’s – as his own in a performance of dramatic commitment that outweighed ‘mere’ aesthetic considerations. If occasionally he sounded a little stretched, more often Nigel emerged invigorated by the challenge. Magnus Dietrich’s honeyed Hohenzollern and Anthony Robin Schneider’s dark-chocolate Kollwitz particularly caught my ear on the male side, as on the other side of the gender divide did Kathrin Zukowski’s imploring, inwardly strong Princess Natalie and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner’s rich-toned, quasi-contralto Electress. Maximilian Schmitt ensure that, whilst the Elector’s justice might be cold, it had its own tonal allure. If Henze sometimes tilts the scales a little too obviously – Bachmann less so, I think – the cast did much, even in concert, to present a conflict worth agonising over. If the Prince’s celebrated battle-cry, ‘In Staub mit allen Feinden Brandenburgs,’ bidding Brandenburg’s foes return to dust, can no longer offer Kleist’s jubilation, it was all the more notable that ambivalence that also undercut mere tragic inversion emerged at the close. 

Whether so understandably anti-militaristic, anti-Prussian a recreation ultimately quite adds up, given inevitable, nagging comparison with Kleist, remains an open question. A few years later than the opera, Pierre Boulez spoke scathingly of Henze as a ‘lacquered hairdresser, who pays homage to an utterly superficial modernism’, here specifically in ‘an unfortunate rehashing of Verdi’s Don Carlos’. (Henze, it is only fair to add, had made for his part considerably more outrageous claims against Boulez, Stockhausen, and others.) If imaginative staging might have been able to do more to address such claims head on, this concert performance pointed further to the need to find out for ourselves. It also connected us with another centenary, falling as it did 100 years to the day after the Felsenreitschule’s first use as a performance venue by the Festival: for Max Reinhardt’s staging of Goldoni’s Il servitore di due padroni. The riding school has of course been used since for a host of memorable stage and concert performances, most renowned of all a filmed Don Giovanni conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Should the current encounter point the way to a staging somewhere soon for Der Prinz von Homburg, it will prove still more welcome, but this will remain an important evening in its own right.

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

Salzburg Festival (5) - Concertgebouw/Mäkelä: Schubert-Berio and Mahler, 21 August 2025

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert-Berio: Rendering
Mahler: Symphony no.5

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Klaus Mäkelä’s multiple orchestral appointments have ignited animated discussion among those preoccupied with such matters. Never having heard him before, I was curious to hear which was (more justified): the sky-high praise or, well, the opposite. On this basis, I am afraid to say the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra does not appear to have chosen well for its artistic partner and chief conductor designate. Not only were Mäkela’s readings of two symphonic works half-baked at (very) best; his flattening effect on the orchestral sound, robbing it of so much of what should have one reaching for superlatives, suggests still more serious problems ahead. A single concert can only give an impression, but it was saddening, even maddening simply to have to wait for the end. Herbert von Karajan would have said he needed a few years away in Ulm, away from the spotlight. There seems, alas, little prospect of that, so Mäkelä’s orchestras will have to work with what they have. I wish them luck. 

Berio’s Rendering showed little at length, other than that Mäkelä’s apparent lack of feeling for either Berio or Schubert, on whose symphonic fragments the work is founded. The first movement opened freshly enough with commendable precision, yet also presented a stiffness that did not augur well. As Schubert ceded to Berio, the latter’s timbral and harmonic invasions were well handled, suggestive of uncertainty and unease, the orchestra’s long pedigree in music written for it evident. The music sounded more and more faceless, though, as time went on. Grave trombones made their presence keenly, magically felt in their big ‘moment’, but this was at best a collection of moments, with mere ‘filling’ in between. The opening of the second movement promised something more, Mäkelä largely letting the music take its course, the orchestra well balanced and pointed. But again, it lost its way—and not in the way Berio intended. A gorgeous oboe solo and, in general, gorgeous wind playing offered some compensation. This, though, was a listless affair that seemed as though it would never end. Strangely thin string sound marked the onset of the finale; it seemed intentional, thoughI could not tell you why. It moved more or less as it ‘should’, albeit without any ear for harmony. Vaguely Mahlerian counterpoint suggested a connection with what was to come, but it was not enough. By the end, it felt as if an hour had passed rather than just over thirty minutes. 

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is an extremely difficult piece to bring off. I have heard more than a few conductors come unstuck in it; this was to be no exception. Mäkelä again presented a succession of episodes that not only had little connection with one another; they even lacked sharp characterisation on their own terms. The orchestra, steeped in this music since the composer himself, played well enough, but there is only so much one can do in Mahler with such rudderless direction. At first, it sounded as though we might have Mahler as Shostakovich: not the way I hear the music, but a point of view, even a guiding principle, at least. Mäkelä soon began to mould the first movement a bit too obviously and, more to the point, incoherently: unconnected, so far as I could hear, either to what had passed or to what was to come. The storm, when it came, was merely petulant. Tempo changes in general were arbitrary; long passages seemed pretty much to grind to a halt. Very much in the line of his Schubert-Berio, there was little to no sense of harmony, let alone harmonic motion. 

The second movement proceeded similarly, in fits and starts, however admirable the playing in itself. It either felt too fast or too slow; not that there is a ‘correct answer’ for tempo matters, but tempo relationships made no sense, still less relation of tempo to other aspects of the score. Balance was often so askew as to sound uninterestingly bizarre. ‘Much the same’ would, I am afraid, be the verdict for an increasingly laboured attempt at the third movement too. The ‘Adagietto’ fared better, at least begin with. If on the moulded side, it held together for quite a while, with genuinely fascinating echoes of Wagner’s string writing, prior to the masturbatory meal Mäkelä made of the close. The disconnected string of aural images, for want of a better phrase, that made up the finale simply had me long for the concert to be over. Eventually it was, in a performance that lasted about 74 minutes. Again, it felt not far off twice that. What a contrast with this same orchestra, almost exactly two years ago, in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony under Iván Fischer. A depressing evening, all the more so since it was acclaimed by the audience to the rafters.