Salzburg Festival (2) - One Morning Turns Into An Eternity, 18 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Schoenberg: Erwartung, op.17
Webern: Five Orchestral Pieces, op.10
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: ‘Der Abschied’

Director – Peter Sellars
Costumes – Camille Assaf
Set designs – George Tsypin
Lighting – James F. Ingalls
Dramaturgy – Antonio Cuenca Ruiz

Aušrinė Stundytė (soprano)

Fleur Barron (contralto)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Image: Ruth Walz
Aušrinė Stundytė

'At a time when violence seems ubiquitous and the future uncertain, Peter Sellars argues that the extremes and intensity of Erwartung are not expressionist exaggerations, but instead reflect the actual experience of existential wounds. Rather than viewing the work as a portrait of a disorientated woman, the director approaches Schoenberg’s masterpiece as a lyrical poem expressing doubt, heartbreak, and hope in the face of despair.' 

My heart sank on reading these words on the Salzburg Festival website a couple of days ago. Not that I in any sense mind a production transforming, questioning, or pretty much anyth-ing a work, so long as it works, but rather that my experience of Peter Sellars’s brand of interventionism has, at least for the best part of two decades, not been entirely positive. The celebrated Harlem Don Giovanni still packs a punch; the other instalments of that 1980s Da Ponte trilogy retain their devotees. Last year’s Salzburg Gambler did no harm, if only because it worked well enough even if one missed – which I largely did – the concept. There is no need to rehearse other experiences; one should give something new a chance, or simply stay away.

Perhaps unwisely, I read Sellars’s programme synopsis immediately prior to the performance. It was of the variety, as for The Gambler last summer, in which the director outlines his vision of the work rather than the work ‘itself’: no bad thing, one might say, if one is trying to establish what the former might be (or have been). Again, I cannot say it inspired ‘hope in the face of [not quite] despair’ and it certainly coloured my initial impressions. To cut a long story short, Sellars has decided to present Erwartung as presenting a woman in search of her probably unfaithful lover, whose child she is bearing and who ‘she has reason to believe … has died under torture’, both of them being ‘part of a resistance movement’. There is much more of it, but actually I discovered – at least to me – that it did not really matter. I am not sure how much of it one would glean without reading the synopsis: the broad setting, probably, given an introduction in which two men with tablets show the woman and forest ‘trees’ that have something of surveillance towers – or is it the other way around? – to them. Beyond that, though, what one actually sees can pretty much be the basis for a more faithful – for me, more interesting – or indeed any other reading of the work. If that sort of realism helps the director, perhaps helps inspire the Woman’s movements, and so on, that need not worry us unduly. 

Whether such ‘working’ would be better left unsaid is a question one might ask, but one is not obliged to take it on board, and for the most part it does not get in the way. The stagecraft is well wrought, to my mind more in sympathy with the work. How much was Sellars and how much Aušrinė Stundytė I do not – need not – know. A boulder on which she rests for a while connected with other stagings, actual or in our minds’ eyes, including that of the recently departed Robert Wilson for Jessye Norman here in Salzburg, that bench a permanent fixture in the foyer. Lighting, shadows, and the Felsenreitschule backdrop suggest and create: for instance, crucifix shadows that might threaten or console, according to taste or situation. 

Image: Monika Rittershaus
Peter Sellars

Once past initial slight irritation, then, I found myself able to concentrate on the performance—and excellent it was too. Stundytė fully inhabited the role: Schoenberg’s and, I imagine, Sellars’s too. A true stage animal, she is – and was – a singing actress in the very best sense: not a euphemism for someone who convinces on stage but cannot sing, but rather one who uses her outstanding lyrical art to truly dramatic ends. Without undue pedantry, every move, every gesture contributed to a greater whole, whilst crucially – for this piece, perhaps, above all – giving the impression of spontaneity, of conception in the moment. Not that there was any shortage of vocal shading, of telling phrasing, of much else in more ‘purely’ musical categories, but the distinction was false and indeed never occurred. 

Guided, inspired by, and in dialogue with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Vienna Philharmonic, as musically all-encompassing a performance of Erwartung as I can recall emerged. Every orchestral flash and flicker, every transformation of timbre and harmony, every imperceptible – in some cases, well-nigh unanalysable – connection between snatches of melody to create musicodramatic form before our ears: these and much more reminded us why this is and always will be a work that presents far more than we can ever grasp in a single experience, why it will always remain one of Schoenberg’s and indeed the Western tradition’s most radical, most extraordinary works. Rarely have I felt so strongly, immediately, and unquestionably the truth of Schoenberg’s 1929 explanation: ‘the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.’ And yet, still it was too much to handle. The ‘resistance movement’ scenario: well, who cared, or even noticed? 

Image: Ruth Walz
Fleur Barron

And so the musical drama continued, distinct yet related, through the Webern op.10 Zwischenspiel, moments and connections of inscrutable, undeniable magic, now all too brief, yet more evidently sufficient, even (relatively) comprehensible. These were exquisite jewels, on the face of it, yet jewels that – crucially for Webern in particular – were in truth developed and developing organisms, not objects. One naturally heard what Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler, as we moved to ‘Der Abschied’ from Das Lied von der Erde held in common, as well as what distinguished them. How much of that was conscious in Salonen’s performance, again, I do not and cannot know. There was certainly no sense of imposing anything on the music (however loaded such categories may be in an art that remains one of performance, never mere execution). There is a great deal of art in concealing art, yet Salonen and the orchestra, throughout on exquisite, burningly committed form, gave one the (flattering) impression one was discovering for oneself rather than being unduly led.  Equally apparent were Schoenbergian motivic snatches, burned in Webernian purgatory, and deftly turned into deceptive Mahlerian chinoiserie, and a broadening of time, the ‘single second’ of the ‘morning’ cited in Marie Pappenheim’s libretto transformed into a window on Mahler’s ‘eternity’. 

I had skipped over Sellars’s Mahler synopsis more quickly, so much so that it left little mark on my experience. In some senses, it seemed closer to the text; at least, it was saying farewell (to a friend) rather than doing something else completely. It remained specific, realistic, and (for better or worse) couched in what seems to me a rather dated sense of therapeutic self-realisation. But we all come to things from different standpoints and experiences; it doubtless helped him – presumably others, too – and it did not get in the way for me. There were again magical images, such as that of silhouetted flautist Karlheinz Schütz far above, birdsong beckoning Fleur Barron – and/or her friend – to the beyond. Barron’s own performance was, as you would expect, less agitated, yet an eminently worthy complement. Imbued with vocal and quasi-instrumental wisdom, it lived and breathed and brought to its culmination a related, liminal world of words, music, image, and gesture that, whatever the words in the programme, never confused sentiment and sentimentality.

Belcea Quartet - Schoenberg and Beethoven, 11 June 2025

Wigmore Hall

Schoenberg: String Quartet no.1 in D minor, op.7
Beethoven: String Quartet no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.131

Corina Belcea, Suyeon Kang (violins)

Krysztof Chorzelski (viola)

Antoine Lederlin (cello)

Schoenberg must be one of the very few composers who, heard with late Beethoven, can emerge as the more difficult of the two. Whether intrinsically so is probably a silly and certainly a fruitless question; yet, in terms of overall programming, it made for an interesting and satisfying pairing from the Belcea Quartet, Schoenberg’s First (numbered) String Quartet followed by Beethoven’s C-sharp minor Quartet. 

Schoenberg’s work opened as if a sequel to Verklärte Nacht, not only in D minor tonality, but in motivic writing, melody, harmony, and much else. Quickly, its coil twisted in a supremely flexible performance which, as a whole, served more to question than comfortably conform ideas of its form ‘being’ the Lisztian four-movements-in-one. ‘Yes, but…’ was the fitting place to start—and continue. Schoenberg’s hyper-expressivity came to the fore not only in febrile instrumental lines but in their connection, division, and (re-)integration, the first Chamber Symphony rightly but a stone’s throw away, ripples soon reaching its world. Harmony and counterpoint created one another, putting me in mind of Schoenberg’s later recognition that Mozart had been his guiding star all along, long before he realised it (as in, say, the Fourth Quartet). Concerto-like violin solo, Brahms in ‘Hungarian’ mode taken surprisingly far east; post-Meistersinger fugato; Brucknerian unison; mysterious harmonics; themes poised between Brahms and Strauss, twisting as if the branches of a Jugendstil forest: these and more combined in a work of Beethovenian struggle poised between the composer’s own Pelleas und Melisande and Die Jakobsleiter. The Belcea’s – and Schoenberg’s – lingering goodbye, in essence an extended cadence, not only fulfilled and extended expectations; it also proved the ideal introduction to the concert’s second half. 

Beethoven’s Quartet emerged less as continuation than response, all the more touching – even Mozartian, albeit too ‘late’ in more than the chronological sense – for it. The fugue was shaped and built meaningfully without ever sounding moulded. The second movement in turn emerged tentatively from its shadows, soon establishing its own modus vivendi, fragility part yet only part of its character. Symmetries and onward development were the dialectic at play here, presaging those in fourth movement variations both rare and earthy. There was something exhilarating, arguably necessary, to the fresh air here: a woodland walk in the composer’s footsteps. The Belcea traced a path that took us somewhere stranger, disconcerting, even frightening, returning us safe and sound with a good dose of Beethovenian humanity. The scherzo’s relief had me smile and inwardly chuckle, its irrepressible qualities vividly told. A poignant, similarly noble sixth movement was disrupted by a seventh whose opening struck the fear of God into the hall, interiority of response no less disquieting. And so, that further dialectic was set up for the movement, without any sacrifice to the crucial element of surprise, to the eternal freshness of the work, and to the temporal freshness of this wonderful performance. It thrilled as it edified. 

As an unexpected bonus, we heard the slow movement from Beethoven’s final quartet, op.135. Its initial conception as an eighth movement, in D-flat major, to op.131 offered, if not an aural glimpse of what might have been, then a fitting choice of encore, tonally and otherwise. Its unfolding continued to surprise yet ultimately consoled.

Uchida - Beethoven, Schoenberg, Kurtág, and Schubert, 7 March 2025

Royal Festival Hall

Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.27 in E minor, op.90
Schoenberg: Three Piano Pieces, op.11
Kurtág: Márta ligaturája
Schubert: Piano Sonata no.21 in B-flat major, op.posth., D 960

Mitsuko Uchida (piano)

An evening with Mitsuko Uchida is rarely less than a privilege, and this was no exception. One audience member at the start seemed to take the idea a little too far, resolutely continuing to film her despite verbal and gestural requests to stop. An usher had to walk across the hall and point a sign forbidding use of telephones in the person’s face. Extraordinary! What with that and an onslaught of coughing that again occasioned requests in vain from the platform to desist, we certainly experienced the worst of live performance. Fortunately, there was enough of the best to compensate. 

The first item on the programme, Beethoven’s E minor Sonata, op.90, took a while properly to get going (a state of affairs perhaps not entirely unrelated to the case of the manic telephone user). Contrasts, especially dynamic contrasts, were immediately present. More broadly, the strange, wonderful world of Beethoven on the cusp of ‘lateness’ was with us. If some of the first movement in particular was a little brittle, that was not entirely inappropriate for this fractured world. Accentuated by very sparing use of the pedal, much of it entirely unpedalled, here was a Beethoven that was anything but comfortable or routine, even if I sometimes felt a slight lack of the continuity that underlies discontinuity. An almost Schubertian intimacy to the close, presaging the second half of the recital, came close to erasing any such reservations. The second movement seemed to breathe the air already of the late Bagatelles, in particular their lyricism, even when turned outward. Occasional technical faltering was of little import; the crucial things were engagement with and expression of Beethoven’s truculent humanism. 

Voice-leading in the first of Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces seemed in context to take its leave not only from Brahms but directly from Beethoven. So, indeed, did much else: contrasts now here become fully dialectical; melodic fragments wending their necessary yet sometimes difficult way; and harmony, yes harmony, too. Above all, there was here a not entirely dissimilar obstinacy—and nobility of spirit. Formal command was unquestionable, as founded on harmony as, say, the Beethoven of Daniel Barenboim (or Wilhelm Furtwängler). Much the same could be said of the second piece, over which the spirits of Wagner and Liszt hovered still more clearly. The third felt very much like the final movement of a ‘sonata’ of a dark variety that was yet possessed of magical chiaroscuro. 

The second half opened with Kurtág’s 2020 miniature Márta ligaturája, written for cimbalom, but here played directly from what seemed to be small manuscript pages (presumably copies), rendering the tribute to the composer’s beloved wife Marta all the more moving. Again, harmony and voice-leading seemed to pick up from where we had left off, only all the more distilled. If kinship with Schoenberg’s op.11 came across with particular strength, the emotional import came closer to his evocation of funeral bells for Mahler in the last of the Six Piano Pieces, op.19. Harmonies, not least pristine major chords, surprised and beguiled. 

Schubert’s final piano sonata followed less attacca than might have been the case, given the audience’s inability to keep quiet. The opening was nevertheless a thing of magic, possessed of seemingly intimate dynamic gradations, strength lying in intimacy and fragility, in persistence. This movement, indeed the sonata, as a whole reminded us what happiness can be built on pain, and vice versa. The last thing one needs here is a maudlin path, tempting though it may be. (I recall my own youthful attempts.) Instead, Schubert’s nobility of utterance was treasured, allowing it to speak ‘for itself’, however illusory that performative idea might be in practice. Ambivalence ran deep, especially in oscillation between major and minor. The recapitulation was, quite properly, a second development: one of a very different nature from those of Beethoven, one that seemingly never gave him a moment’s thought. The sound of Uchida’s chords in the coda would have been worth the price of admission alone 

Beautifully judged in tempo, as in all else, the slow movement neither dragged nor was rushed. It built; it sang; it said what needed to be said. The revelation of C-sharp major silenced any questions about how to understand it enharmonically and in relation to the tonality of the piece as a whole; Schubert, Uchida, and we knew.  A light-footed scherzo, if not quite lifting the clouds, suspended them for a moment. Its trio’s ambiguity, strange even by Schubert’s standards, duly registered, thus paving the way for the manifold, still deeper ambiguities of the finale, its decidedly non-Beethovenian subjectivity simply present, immanent. That said, there was here too a decidedly human, as well as humanist, obstinacy that seemed to bind together all the compositional voices on this programme: in this case, both aptly and surprisingly, in the returns of the rondo theme and the alternative, fleetingly Mahlerian vistas of the episodes.

Concert tally for 2024

Very mixed, with no one composer featuring very highly. Had I not gone to the Salzburg Mozartwoche in January, Mozart would, to my surprise, have been almost nowhere at all. Schoenberg's ranking is pleasing in one sense, but given I went to everything I could and it was his 150th anniversary year, it is slightly depressing in another. As with the operas, though, it has been good to hear such a variety of music, from Anderson to Žuraj. Rules for counting here.

6 Beethoven, Schoenberg

5 Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert

4 Bach, Ives

3 Haydn, Mahler, Salieri, Strauss

2 Birtwistle, Bruckner, Fauré, Debussy, Peter Eötvös, Lisa Illean, Liszt, Stravinsky, Wagner, Jörg Widmann, Zemlinsky

1 Julian Anderson, Anon., Grażyna Bacewicz, Sally Beamish, Nicolas Bernier, Judith Bingham, Boismortier, Britten, Busoni, Byrd, Bob Chilcott, Clemens non Papa, Chopin, Peter Cornelius, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Théodore Dubois, Dvořák, Johannes Eccard, Elgar, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Benjamin Godard, Grisey, Jacobus Händl, Handel, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Haydn, Fanny Hensel, Hindemith, Honegger, Toshio Hosokawa, Eberhard Kloke, Lachenmann, Lassus, Ligeti, Elisabeth Lutyens, Missy Mazzoli, Cathy Milliken, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Nono, Palestrina, Owain Park, Pärt, Plainchant, Poulenc, Praetorius, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Anton Reicha, RaveI, Saint-Saens, Smetana. Szymanowski, Vivaldi, Webern, Vito Žuraj

Burkhard/London Sinfonietta/Berman - Schoenberg, Lutyens, and Webern, 20 October 2024

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schoenberg: Serenade, op.24
Lutyens: Six Tempi, for 10 instruments
Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op.41
Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Webern: Symphony, op.21
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Andrew Zolinsky (piano)

Richard Burkhard (baritone, speaker)

London Sinfonietta

Jonathan Berman (conductor)

Concert images: Monika S Jakubowska

Much nonsense is spoken about all composers, all artists, all celebrated historical and contemporary figures. There can be few, save perhaps for Wagner, who at least bears a share of responsibility for the nonsense spoken about him, about whom more and greater nonsense is spoken than Schoenberg. A Queen Elizabeth Hall concert devoted to his music, with further contributions from Webern and Elisabeth Lutyens, sold out, once again disproving the claim that no one wishes to hear this music. Even if that were true, it demands nonetheless be performed. Whether readings from Schoenberg and others, and changes in lighting – a tricolore for the Ode to Napoleon – added up to anything much may have been a matter of taste. In the greater sum of things, they did no harm either, and perhaps offered a way in for some. So too will have an excellent pre-concert discussion from conductor Jonathan Berman and musicologists Jonathan Cross and Julie Brown. 

The problem is not that there is no audience for Schoenberg’s music, but rather that certain interests in the musical world wish us not to, as with modernist music of subsequent generations. There is more than a hint of the trendy vicar to (largely US American) neotonal evangelists insisting on the ‘popularity’ and ‘relevance’ of something that at best has long since had its day and probably never had one, whilst the Second Viennese School and what was once called the ‘postwar avant garde’ continue to nourish performers, audiences, and indeed composers alike. If, like many other cities, London has done culpably little to celebrate the 150th birthday of the most important composer of the twentieth century, this London Sinfonietta concert helped make amends. Its dedicatee, the late Alexander Goehr, would surely both have applauded this contribution and rightly deplored the establishment’s ongoing hostility. 

More important, these performances will surely have made fresh converts from a pleasingly mixed audience—save, alas, for those who more or less obliterated stretches of Webern’s Symphony with their coughs, shuffles, and worse. It was not entirely clear which was the chicken and which the egg in a surprisingly tentative performance, at least in terms of expression. We certainly heard pitches and timbres, various symmetries and their implications readily apparent. Yet the whole in combination fell somewhat flat, beautiful moments never quite combining to make the symphony the work is claimed to be—and is. For perhaps the first time in my life, I began to think a Webern piece too long. The music, however, sang more as time went on, Webern’s second movement a considerable improvement on the first. 

Lutyens’s 1957 Six Tempi for ten instruments had fared much better, as did all else that we heard. The influence of Schoenberg and Webern was certainly apparent in this, Lutyens’s breakthrough work, though nothing was to be reduced to mere precedent in utterances and performances of great integrity. The six movements’ varied quality, whether in approach to melody, emotional quality, and other aspects of character shone through. Scintillating piano writing, a strong sense of representation or embodiment, one movement that even suggested serial miniature Bruckner (one might say Webern does that too in the first movement of his Symphony), and much more combined to leave me keen to explore further. More please, London Sinfonietta.

The rest was Schoenberg, beginning with the Serenade, op.24, which received an outstanding performance from the opening viola line onwards. In its combination of precision and lilt, it indeed proved prophetic of much that was to come. ‘Serenade’ covers a multitude of sins, and a particular virtue of Berman’s knowing, idiomatic performance was its understanding of roots in more popular music, again without in any sense indulging in reductionism. One could hear, perhaps even see, the days of Schrammelmusik; I could not help but think, particularly in this first movement, of a 1900 Reichenau photograph of Schoenberg, Fritz Kreisler, and two others (Louis Savart, Carl Redlich, and Eduard Gärtner). So much was toe-tapping, here and beyond. Much was haunted, not only by the past, but also by the future. Even without knowing the first Chamber Symphony was coming, one felt that it was present in method, sonority, and harmony: both as complement and as contrast. 

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center

For Schoenbergian dialectical method, or better that multiplicity of dialectical methods, was the progenitor of dance and delight: doubtless no surprise to those who knew, but the most welcome of introductions on the cusp of dodecaphony for those who might not have done. A rich, flexible performance took us through Wozzeck-like dances, fantastic arabesque flights in multiple directions, nostalgia, resolution (in one sense, anyway), density, and lightness of being, in a flow as inevitable as it was endless imaginative. Command of detail from the Sinfonietta proved key to liberation of the Schoenbergian imagination; so too did seemingly effortless command of idiom and formal articulation. Here was a Viennese serenade and no mistake, yet it never fell prey to lesser composers’ confusion of sentiment and sentimentality. 

Richard Burkhard, baritone for the Serenade, shone equally as reciter in the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, which took its leave from Roosevelt’s ‘Day of Infamy’ speech in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as well of course from Byron—and Hitler. Present-day comparisons will surely have come to many minds; but here, rightly, this emerged in melodramatic expansion of the piano quintet. ‘Expression’ of all kinds was intense, but it was founded in the notes, not least in Schoenberg’s inheritance from the chamber music of Beethoven and Brahms. We heard and felt the ghosts of earlier forms, not only genres, combining to form something both old and new: truly visionary and ultimately defiant. 

In a very different way, so we did in Andrew Zolinsky’s account of the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, Brahms the starting point and never vanquished, Wagner the purveyor of unendliche Melodie, Schoenberg the architect of an ever-transforming constellation in the musical skies. Zolinsky certainly had his own ideas, the third taken slower than one generally hears and gaining in weight of utterance. As with other performances of the evening, they were rooted in the score and in its potentialities, in letter and in spirit: in both style and idea. 

The First Chamber Symphony was long the Sinfonietta’s calling card. Let us hope that it might become so again, given so intriguing and satisfying a performance as we heard here. Berman approached it symphonically, in the sense of a Brahms symphony’s motivic working that requires a great deal of flexibility in elucidation, so as to sound the most natural thing in the world—which it both is and is not. Unshowy warmth and security in line and direction brought Brahms masters of old to mind and, not for the first time, had one regret more of them did not show such devotion to Schoenberg. Musical line horizontal and vertical flowed beautifully, without a hint of the problems of balance that bedevil so many performances. If the Sinfonietta’s long history with the work was part of the key to that, so too surely was something new brought to the party—and it was a party of Haydnesque joy, tonality (not neotonality) in context both relativised and rejuvenated. Happy belated birthday, Arnold Schoenberg.

Weilerstein/BPO/Shani - Prokofiev and Schoenberg, 19 September 2024

Philharmonie

Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, op.125
Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, op.5

Alisa Weilerstein (cello)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

A concert of two halves would generally be taken to mean one good, one not so good. In this case, I more to suggest approximate temporal equality, albeit with a second half a little longer, and first-half bemusement followed by an excellent performance of an acknowledged masterpiece. Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto is one of those pieces I have long known of, without ever (I think) making its actual acquaintance. Bearing in mind the usual caveats from a single hearing, it is difficult to know for certain whether my bemusement related to the work itself. This performance, from Alisa Weilerstein, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Lahav Shani, seemed very good, but might another performance have dissuaded me from the reluctant conclusion that it marked a significant decline in the composer’s powers? For now, all I can do is report what I heard, and suggest that, even for great admirers of Prokofiev’s music, amongst whom I count myself, this material stood in greater need of revision than the composer’s death permitted. 

The first movement’s opening tutti was promising, Shani and the players managing somehow to sound both bright and dark: a matter of timbre and harmony respectively, if not exclusively. Weilerstein’s solo response was intense, in vibrato and other respects, Prokofiev’s trademark sidestepping melodic writing instantly familiar. This began, then, very much in the line of other late Prokofiev works, especially those in the minor mode. There were, moreover, no balance issues, cello and cellist more than holding their own: doubtless a matter of writing as well as performance. The movement had other ear-catching passages, for instance pizzicato cellos shadowing the solo cellist, whose rich, warm tone far from precluded precision. Shani handled tempo changes very well, all the way up to a final, curious winding down. 

Hand on heart, I could not have said I found it top-drawer Prokofiev, but there was enough to retain interest, and a hint – if only a hint – of the scherzando grotesquerie of old at the beginning of the central ‘Allegro giusto’ augured well. If the music soon lapsed into the most blameless of Prokofiev’s late style, I was not inclined to be censorious. Weilerstein’s often astounding virtuosity more than held the attention too, not least in the cadenza. Alas, at a certain point, it began to seem interminable. It was difficult to imagine not only quite why the music had to go on for so long, but also why it had been ordered in the way it was. As I said, it did not seem to be the performance, but I am not entirely sure. A new mood was struck, not before time, in the third and final movement, the BPO wind making the most of their solos, as was a cellist for whom no technical difficulty appeared insurmountable. If more rhapsodic than symphonic, then, Prokofiev was not dead yet. 

If the inevitable Bach sarabande – am I alone in thinking concerto encores should be the exception rather than the rule? – did little to dispel doubts concerning the quality of Prokofiev’s work, nor did Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande. As it happens, the last time the Berlin Philharmonic played it, fifteen long years ago, I was also in the audience. Shani had little to fear from comparisons with 2009’s Christian Thielemann; both performances made a considerable impression on me, this marking a fine contribution to the composer’s 150^th anniversary celebrations. Balances were finely attuned; a keen sense of drama was throughout achieved; overall coherence and an ear for colour were both in evidence, as were many other virtues. Every line – and there are many here – seemed to be heading somewhere, often to be opposed by another, in a motivic web that may have been complex but whose method was undeniable. As in so much of the best post-Wagnerian (and Wagnerian music) the violas proved crucial, as here in addition did the excellent solo violist. 

Seductive and consoling by turns, this was music for whom Maeterlinck’s drama proved a starting point to further exploration, as if an orchestra-only version of Gurrelieder or an expanded full-orchestral sequel to Verklärte Nacht. Schoenberg’s actual orchestral experience may as yet have been severely limited, but one would never have known it. The sincerity of his ‘voice’ was, moreover, never to be doubted in a gracious account for which Shani knew how to defer to the score without being hidebound by it. As Schoenberg’s music danced, as so often it does, echoes of old Vienna resounded. As it sank into darkness, we experienced all too well its tragic import. And as it gestured to the future, counterpoint always crystal clear, the First Chamber Symphony and even the Five Orchestral Pieces beckoned.

 

Musikfest Berlin (2) - Schoenberg and Ives, 2 September 2024

Kammermusiksaal

Schoenberg: Three Piano Pieces, op.11; Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19; Five Piano Pieces, op.23; Piano Pieces, op.33a and op.33b; Suite for Piano, op.25
Ives: Piano Sonata no.2, ‘Concord, Mass., 1840-1860’ (1947 version)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)  

For most pianists, to present the complete (non-posthumous) piano œuvre of Schoenberg or to perform Ives’s Concord Sonata would be enough for a tough yet rewarding recital. To offer both, in twin homage to composers whose 150^th birthday is being celebrated this year, is by any standards a feat, let alone to do so in such searching and comprehending performances. But thenm Pierre-Laurent Aimard has never been ‘most pianists’. Apparently, he had performed the complete Schoenberg in a single recital only once before, as a teenager, followed by the Hammerklavier Sonata . 

Schoenberg’s piano music is not exactly absent from the recital hall, though the number of pianists who perform it is not great, and they tend to concentrate on the op.11 Three Piano Pieces and the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces. One might have thought works that unquestionably changed the history of music – the op.23 Five Piano Pieces including the first published twelve-note piece, and the op.25 Suite both including Schoenberg’s first twelve-note composition and forming his first entirely twelve-note work – might be heard a little more often, but no. Once, one might have said they were more written about and read than heard; now, it is difficult even to make that claim. As for the two op.33 pieces, this was, I think, the first time even I, as a Schoenbergian of reasonable enthusiasm and commitment, had heard them in concert. Given that Aimard also performed the Piano Concerto earlier this year, might we hope for a recording of that with the solo œuvre? We are still far from spoiled for choice in either. 

The first of the op.11 Pieces registered with radical, far from arbitrary, freedom, indicative of many years’ internalisation. Here was a fantastical Schoenberg, affinities lying as much with Schumann as with Brahms, though never to be pinned down to one particular ‘flavour’. Indeed, kaleidoscopic range, whether in dynamics or such reference, was not the least of this recital’s virtues. If this is ‘freely atonal’ music – one can register doubts concerning the label, whilst conceding it is unlikely either to be replaced or bettered – then perhaps this was also ‘freely atonal performance’. The opening of the second struck me as insisting less on remnants of D minor than often; that is, until it did. Somehow, that all-important figure insisted on its ostinato procedure as if all depended upon it, and in a way it did. Again, all seemed to be in motion, according to a distinctly Romantic sensibility that immediately extended beyond ‘mere’ Romanticism. The third piece was as furious and as capricious, and so much more in between, as anyone could hope for. 

In the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, thinner textures were immediately apparent; they could hardly fail to be. Likewise Schoenberg at his most aphoristic. It was, though, his sheer single-mindedness that shone through the exquisite spinning of a near-single line, however much shadowed on either side (pitch) and other sides (other parameters). The sheer magical quality to the final chord of the second, the almost vocal eloquence of the third, and the darting will-o’-the-wisp movement of the fourth: none of it, for once, required great virtuosity, but it required the fiercest of musical intelligence, which is what we heard. A distinctly unsentimental reading of the sixth piece sounded recollections of the Mahlerian funeral bells; above all, here as elsewhere, it sounded as music, programme or no programme. 

The op.23 Pieces gained greatly from being heard in this context. One immediately sensed an impulse to constructivism, even – perhaps particularly – on such elusive foundations. Kinship to other Schoenberg music of a similar time, as well as to more ‘freely’ atonal predecessors – the still-more-seldom heard Four Orchestral Songs, op.22, a case in point – was immediately apparent; so too were the reinvention and reintegration of polyphony. With Schoenberg, as with Bach, it is never either/or. Each piece sounded as a response to its predecessor, the second for instance as vehement as it was protean. Aimard less argued than demonstrated beyond doubt that this music mattered. The third was characterised by a splendidly Schoenbergian combination of obstinacy and whimsy; the fourth’s eloquence of utterance evoked Beethoven; and the fifth, of course, marked another bridge, to the twelve-note music to come, reminding us as much of its dancing, its smiling, and its open-heartedness, as its rigour. 

If I was brought up sharply by the beginning of op.33a, it was because I had been expecting the Suite. It was a nice jolt, as it was to return to the Suite for the conclusion of the first half: an invitation to listen differently. Schoenberg’s very particular mixture of expressionism and the Bauhaus glowered and glistened. In its successor, op.33b, from two years later (1931), we seemed to hear an attempt to create a new centre, its abandonment, and a new freedom that resulted from both. In performance, as in work, music never went quite where one expected. One needed to listen—and that was good. 

The Suite, op.25, emerged as quite a reckoning with Bach: harmonic as much as in ‘style’. We all know, after all, that Schoenberg had little patience with ‘style’ as a would-be substitute for Idea; it was certainly Idea we heard – and felt – here. The white intensity of the ‘Präludium’ and its Bachian ambition set out a new world before us, enabling one to hear this music as never before and, again, above all as music. Schoenberg’s need to communicate and the sheer abundance of that communication came to the fore in the Gavotte’ and Musette that followed; so too did a sense of delight, even of fun, as well as that trademark, ever-productive obstinacy. The Intermezzo, here the work’s beating heart, attained a well-nigh Mahlerian intensity of utterance, without forsaking an equally characteristic sense of childlike delight. All the while, through the Menuett and Trio, to the Gigue, line and development were pursued as one, the latter signing off with an éclat to foreshadow and even to rival Boulez. 

If one naturally heard passing resemblances, especially harmonic, with Schoenberg in Ives’s Sonata – there are, after all, only twelve notes in the chromatic scale – it was more the composer’s particular belief and integrity in his own inimitable utterance that characterised what we heard. Aimard’s eloquence and understanding as guide in turn enabled us as listeners to place greater confidence in our own listening—and thus to reap rewards in response. The beginning of the first movement, ‘Emerson’, had a proper sense of mapping out of space to come, even if it could only offer a foretaste at most. Familiar melodies came through, though here that did not really seem to be the point as perhaps it sometimes may have been later on. The multiplicity and obduracy already familiar from Schoenberg took on new guise of expression and form. Line is perhaps more difficult to trace here than in Schoenberg; it may again not even be the point. Being able to place such confidence in our guide to this most singular of divine comedies was nonetheless at least part of the battle. Moreover, for all the craggy masculinity of utterance, there was tenderness too, nowhere more so than at the close of this movement. 

‘Hawthorn’ was possessed of a very different character, heard with an unmistakeable sense of release and propulsion. Clusters were magical, even Debussy-like, to be savoured almost in themselves, yet rigour and struggle ultimately remained the thing. The plain-spokenness of ‘The Alcotts’, building Romantic momentum in work and performance, and the newly enigmatic quality to ‘Thoreaux’, however different its material and implications would soon prove, seemed to speak of an almost Joycean musical universe, albeit one rooted in particular, unmistakeably American transcendentalism. Summation seems reductive; perhaps summa comes a little closer, if a little ‘foreign’. Then, inevitably, all turned again more wayward. Like Schoenberg, Ives can never be pinned down. Why, indeed, would anyone try?

Röschmann/VSO/Hahn - Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, 5 June 2024

Musikverein

Schoenberg: Erwartung, op.17
Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Patrick Hahn (conductor)

What is Schoenberg’s single greatest work? It is a silly question, at least as silly as asking the same of Mahler, of Webern, or of Boulez. Sometimes we ask ourselves silly questions, though; I suspect that Erwartung would come pretty close to the top of any aggregate list for Schoenbergians. Written over an extraordinarily short period of time – Schoenberg was often, though not always, like that – the monodrama comes from his Wunderjahr of 1909. However, it had to wait until 1924 for its first performance, in Prague on 6 June, conducted by the composer’s great friend, advocate, and brother-in-law (I think we can still count him as such, though Mathilde Schönberg had died the previous year) Alexander von Zemlinsky. This Musikverein performance, by Dorothea Röschmann, the Vienna Symphony, and Patrick Hahn, must surely therefore have been the last of its first century-in-performance, coming as it did on 5 June 2024. Aptly enough for so prophetic yet historically rooted a work, its successor the following evening would inaugurate a new performing century.

This, at any rate, made for a glorious finale that could also look forward, surely the equal of any performance I have heard and the superior of many, whether live or on record. In his 150^th year, Schoenberg’s place as the single most important – not necessarily ‘greatest’, whatever that may mean, though certainly a serious contender for that too – composer of the twentieth century is assured. It always was; that, however, has still not translated into broader acceptance from a frankly doltish public. (That his rejection is often, even usually, laced with antisemitism, unconscious as much as conscious, makes it worse; but let us leave that aside for now.) 

First and far from least, it was beautifully sung by Röschmann: beauty, song, and beauty of singing all being involved there. It was astonishingly accurate too, and not only in the vocal part, though one could have taken dictation from it had, somehow, one not been swept away by the experience. Hahn’s expert balancing of the lines – always a tricky, in another sense unsung, business in the music of the Second Viennese School – was such that one almost did not realise he was doing it. That was also, naturally, the accomplishment of the golden-toned VSO, here moreover sounding every bit as ‘Viennese’ as their Philharmonic cousins (to whom I am sure they are rightly fed up of being compared). Structure, moreover, was as at least clear as I can recall, Schoenberg’s scenic division of the work, the fourth and final scene far longer than the others, uncommonly apparent and dramatically meaningful, without making the performance seem anything but a convincing whole. Climaxes were, well, as climactic as one could hope, and then some; yet always something was shifting, conclusion or, as we might now say, ‘closure’, never on the horizon. 

Music arose from drama, and vice versa. Schoenberg never points in merely one direction; nor did he here. The whirlwind third scene in particular seemed but a stone’s throw, if that, from the later Schoenberg of, say, the almost-never-performed op.22 Four Orchestral Songs, yet there was always much of earlier writing too: for instance, the op.8 Six Orchestral Songs and, indeed, Gurrelieder. As we entered the final scene, Röschmann edged closer at times to Sprechgesang, yet only at times. Later, the opera – for let us never forget it is one – we seemed to come close to Wozzeck’s Marie, at least in the voice, for the orchestral writing rightly sounded very different. The chill of the strings following ‘Ich will das nicht … nein, ich will nicht …’ offered aftershock that was terrible, even terrifying, indeed, initiating certain intimations, so it seemed, of Pierrot lunaire. There was great tenderness too; how could one not sympathise with this protagonist? One truly felt, moreover, the transformation of the ‘Dämmerung’ to which she referred toward the end, in a musical breeze that testified to Schoenberg’s mastery of orchestration as well as masterly orchestral playing. And the musical upward spiral with which the score came to a close, if not closure, was just the thing: tantalisingly brief, yet saying all that could be said or played. 

What, then, is Zemlinsky’s single greatest work? I am not sure it is quite so silly a question; the Lyric Symphony would probably have no serious rival in any survey, though it might still beg the question, ‘why are you asking?’ One possible answer might be to help understand why other works by the composer have never quite lived up to its renown, though the operas again seem to be experiencing some of a revival. The symphonic poem – his only one – Die Seejungfrau is also faring better now, though its chequered genesis will probably always count against it. Zemlinsky withdrew the score after only three performances, and suppressed it. The unpublished score was divided, the first movement given to Zemlinsky’s friend Marie Pappenheim, also Schoenberg’s librettist for Erwartung. Zemlinsky retained the second and third movements, taking them with him when leaving Europe for the United States in 1938. Only in the early 1980s did scholars come to realise that the three movements belonged together. Die Seejungfrau was finally published, receiving its first ‘modern’ performance, conducted by one of those scholars, Peter Gülke, only in 1984. It may not be a masterpiece – it can, to be brutally honest, be a little repetitive at times and would, unsurprisingly, have benefited from revision – but it is still very well worth hearing, especially in a performance such as this.

Zemlinsky’s method of motivic transformation came very much to the fore, Hahn showing himself as accomplished a Zemlinskian as a Schoenbergian, building tension here, especially in the first movement, as expertly as he had in Erwartung. In some respects, the work came to resemble a wordless, voiceless opera. Its sepulchral (subaquatic) opening here had something in common with Strauss, without ever reducing itself to imitation or ‘likeness’; any similarities, throughout the score, were just that, no more. Perhaps the closest kinship – this has struck me before – was with Mahler’s Das klagende Lied. Maybe there is some influence there – its first performance came in 1901 – but it was actually the first, long unperformed part of Mahler’s score that more often came to mind, so let us banish any thought of derivation and celebrate commonality. Pacing and balance were equally impressive here, and how the orchestra shimmered, glowed, and glistened, as if the waters were first awaiting and then celebrating the arrival of the mermaid and her subjectivity. Opposing and complementary material were deftly shaped, again with a keen ear for drama, in the second movement. The twin return to darkness and progress to something approaching transfiguration of the third both offered an intriguing echo of Tannhäuser and built to a grand climax and further shadows of its own. For both Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, it was not a case of either/or.

Aimard/RSB/Popelka - Schoenberg and Mahler, 9 March 2024

Philharmonie

Schoenberg: Piano Concerto, op.42
Mahler: Symphony no.1

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Petr Popelka (conductor)

Images: Peter Meisel

The world’s near-silence for Schoenberg’s anniversary year continues to deafen. Perhaps everywhere is waiting for September, when his birthday falls, and all will be revealed in a flurry of ‘new season’ announcements. And perhaps eternal Friede will descend upon the Erde this Christmas. In the meantime, Berlin, mostly at the Philharmonie, where there is an exhibition from the Arnold Schönberg Center in the foyer, continues to do better than most. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is certainly doing his bit, joined the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) and Petr Popelka for an outstanding performance of the Piano Concerto, probably the best I have heard live—and a match for the best on record.


The opening was unusual: difficult to put my finger (or ear) quite on how, but Aimard’s solo put me in mind a soliloquy, with a melancholy hint of exile. Perhaps it was recently having seen a dramatization of Exil by Schoenberg’s fellow Californian exile Lion Feuchtwanger at the Berliner Ensemble, though I do not think it was only an external matter. Other voices joined from the orchestra, conversationally, also as if recalling, yet with a distinct hint of foreboding. In general, I have not found Schoenberg’s ‘programme’ for the work especially helpful. Indeed, looking at what I wrote in my ‘critical life’ of the composer, I see I went so far as this: ‘Whether the programme is of any help is highly debatable. Schoenberg, speaking vaguely of war, in a way that could readily be made to fit an almost infinite number of pieces of music, described the work’s expressive content as follows: “1. Life was so easy; 2. Suddenly hatred broke out; 3. A grave situation was created; 4. But life goes on.” Perhaps it assisted his overall conception; there is no more reason for us to dwell on it than Schoenberg had found there was, all those years previously, to dwell on Mahler’s for his Third Symphony.’ (For that, I am afraid you will have to read the book!) Mahler’s programmes are another issue, of course, and I tend to feel similarly about them, probably more so; for whatever reason, the programme of Schoenberg’s concerto seemed to speak more readily than I have previously experienced. The performance was not bound to it; it is not a performance indication. It is also highly subject to criticism, were one to take it too literally as about the world; of all people, Schoenberg knew there was nothing sudden about the outbreak of hatred. Yet here, in this performance, these suggestions and their expressive implications proved almost suddenly precise. It is always good to re-learn something one thinks one knows.

There was close to ideal clarity of texture, which certainly did not preclude weight, but rather proved the key to understanding it. Very much like Brahms, one might say. One could hear the extraordinary ear for orchestration, combinations of instruments sounding as if newly invented, not unlike one of Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions. Ever-transforming in developing variation, the first section built subtly—and, as Schoenberg does so often, for those who care to listen, it danced too. As the mood darkened, increasing rhythmic angularity made its point in performance as well as work. Echoes of the Golden Calf scene from Moses und Aron were stronger, not only in tuned percussion, than I can recall. It was a (controlled) riot, but there was something still more unsettling behind it. We should not be unduly reductive about such matters, but the deceptions of too-ready communication and the fanaticism it breeds stand with us now almost as strongly as they did in 1942. When the orchestra sang what came across as a great song of protest, it was difficult not to think of current predicaments, all the more so as Mahlerian echoes issued from a twilight zone. All the while, Aimard had a pianistic work-out to give Prokofiev a run for his money.


The Adagio section emerged as consequent, then, as its counterpart in the First Chamber Symphony, reminding us of the deep roots of many of Schoenberg’s formal preoccupations. It was just as songful and soulful too, though seemingly still under assault from all around, Bachian string figures weaponised with terror. They spoke from Hell, and they spread. Aimard’s piano part seemed nonetheless to bind everything together, enabling a turn around. It was not easy, but that made it all the more a Schoenbergian triumph of the human spirit, Popelka’s collaborative stewardship of the orchestra as important in that success.


For an encore – I once heard, in another context, Maurizio Pollini give this as one of several (!) – Aimard played the complete op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, introducing them by saying several people had told him, in their hearts, they hated Schoenberg’s music; he however, loved it. (Imagine saying that to anyone. Why would you ‘hate’ music in that way, let alone some of the most influential and rawly expressive music of the twentieth century? There continues, alas, to be no better place to find freely expressed antisemitism than in Schoenberg reception.) If anything, this proved a conception more heroic still, not only on account of some of the most determined bronchial disruption from around the hall I have ever heard. From the first, heard as if in a single, ever-variegated breath, through a pulverising miniature fourth (its joy is that one cannot become too heavy, its curse that one cannot become heavy enough), to the evocation of Mahler’s funeral bells in the sixth, a bridge to the second half: it was clear-sighted, unsentimental, but imbued with true sentiment in every note and its manifold connections.

That Mahler’s First Symphony had a performance in many ways admirable, if ultimately lacking the volcanic necessity of both Schoenberg works, yet was received with considerably greater enthusiasm by the audience tells its own tale, on which there is no further need to dwell. It certainly suggested that Popelka is a young conductor to be reckoned with, who has already made significant progress in his conception of a work whose difficult corners have defeated many, as well as confirming and renewing the excellence of the RSB. String harmonics, at the opening, imparted a sense of something that has always been there, of Nature – to which (human?) subjectivity had yet to be added, which it was by interjections from elsewhere. The first movement as a whole received a lyrical, characterful performance, which, whilst one should be wary of essentialisation, seemed rather in the line of Bohemian traditions of Mahler performance. Some might have found it too leisurely; for me, there was a keen sense of finding one’s way, perhaps through woodland, and with moments of existential loneliness to match (so long as one listened). Did it sometimes lose its way? I do not think so, though there were occasions when it might have been more clearly traced. That will come, though. And the eight horns of the RSB sounded glorious.


There followed a vigorous, buoyant, ‘naturally’ rustic Ländler: full of character once more, if slightly sectional and just a touch hard-driven at the close of its first iteration. The  trio evinced grace and Schwung, though it might have had greater depth. The reprise of Ländler material was on the brash side: deliberately so, I am sure, though veering a little too close to the ‘orchestral showpiece’ tendency driven by past decades’ Mahler-saturation. The third movement came off better, its opening taken (thank God) by solo double bass rather than the frankly idiotic practice suggested by editor Sander Wilkens of employing the entire section. The mood, as it and Mahler’s writing developed, was nicely twilit. Ensuing stylistic contrasts were well handled and integrated, a hushed, languorous sweetness imparted to the second trio. It was, perhaps, a bit listless, but that seemed to be the point, to evoke a world of dreams, disrupted by the return of Bruder Martin. The final mostly fell into place very well, balance, weight, and momentum well judged, whilst permitting space to enjoy the ride. These are very tricky balances to strike; if at this stage, Popelka’s conception lacked the last measure or two of formal integration, orchestral excellence and compensation offered fine compensation.

BPO/Gatti - Schoenberg, Strauss, and Wagner, 2 February 2024

Philharmonie

Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, op.4 (1943 version for string orchestra)
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, op.24
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act I and ‘Liebestod’

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniele Gatti (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

Repertoire, orchestra, and conductor: a marriage made in heaven—or, if we are to be Nietzschean about it, in the ‘voluptuousness of hell’ with which he diagnosed Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In this cleverly devised programme, Daniele Gatti and the Berlin Philharmonic took us through three works of explicit transfiguration, that transfiguration, transcendence, or whatever we want to call it in each case following something darker, more malign, more voluptuous and yes, both heavenly and hellish—or, as Nietzsche would have it, beyond good and evil. 

The Berliners followed their outstanding Schoenberg programme of the previous week, under Kirill Petrenko, with a Verklärte Nacht of equal distinction. I often have my doubts about the version for string orchestra – what does it actually add to the original string sextet writing? – but not here, not for a second. What it was to hear massed Berlin strings, superbly led by Vineta Sareika-Völkner, in this music: the tremolo of seven double-basses, or the unanimity of violas in pizzicato, and unisons to put the fear of God into Bruckner.  The dark allure of its opening, taken a little slower than usual and all the better for it in Gatti’s particular conception, attested to a veritable symphonic poem. Flexibility was such that one did not notice it, all part of a greater, coherent whole, heard – like all the music on this programme – as if in a single, infinitely variegated breath. Violence was unsettlingly sweet; transfiguration, when it came, never without shades of something darker. For all its tonal insistence, relatively speaking, there were spellbinding passages that took us to liminal places of near-suspension. And, for once, we heard a true outpouring of love, abundant, fulfilling, even overflowing, once the figurative tide had turned. It seemed to prefigure, perhaps even to ‘correct’, as Wagner attempted with Schopenhauer, its fons et origo in Tristan. There was rhetorical eloquence too, but never did it come into conflict with form and structure. Post-Wagnerian narrative, be it musical or extra-musical, seared its way into our consciousness, albeit with all the chamber-music motivic rigour of a composer devoted with equal ferocity to the legacy of Brahms.

 

Another dark opening announced Tod und Verklärung: one noticed and felt, in its heartbeat hesitations both similarity and difference vis-à-vis Verklärte Nacht. It was immediately clear that this was a more tonally stable world; there was no question here of losing aural sight of those tonal moorings, even as the soul departed for wherever it was going (or not). The excellence of the Berlin strings was now added to by woodwind and eventually others, the orchestra once more at the very top of its game. I should be listing the entire orchestra were I to name every instance, but special mention should go to the solo flute, oboe, English horn, and of course to Sareika-Völkner as leader. Clarity and purpose in musical narrative were second to none in Gatti’s reading, that there was simply no need to ask the old question about the importance (or not) of the programme. The work’s complex form – the more so the more one truly listens, just as in Beethoven – was brought to life unerringly, moving and thrilling in equal measure in a performance that had one feel one was hearing this music for the first time. The radiance of the conclusion proved every inch worth of comparison to that of Schoenberg’s piece.

As it did to that of the Tristan excerpts. Again, I often have my doubts about the wisdom of pairing the first-act Prelude to the so-called ‘Liebestod’; again, such was the conviction of this performance that such doubts never arose, and not only because Liszt’s description is better jettisoned for Wagner’s own: ‘Isoldes Verklärung’. The intensity of the Prelude had to be heard to be believed, vibrato but a single example of its expressive richness at a dramatic temperature at least equal to that of Karl Böhm, albeit in less of a hurry. Not only did the music unfolded as if in a single breath; it offered testament to Schopenhauer’s one, all-pervasive Will, of which it stands as the closest and dearest representation. The Prelude’s inability or unwillingness to close was so apparent that it seemed, for once, a natural move to expunge its pantonal presentiments through Isolde’s transfiguration. That second part flowed as if against the most inviting of tides, until enveloped by them. ‘Sind es Wellen sanfter Lüfte?’ Why choose? This was a miraculous lightness of being – and non-being – unbearable, doubtless, were it forever, yet for the moment exquisite and necessary beyond words. I have yet to hear Gatti conduct Wagner’s drama in the theatre, but on this evidence it would be a Tristan to rival those of Barenboim and Kleiber—and his own Bayreuth Parsifal.

BPO/Petrenko - Schoenberg, 25 January 2024

Philharmonie

Chamber Symphony no.1 in E major, op.9
Die Jakobsleiter

Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch
One who is called – Daniel Behle
One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle
The chosen one – Gyula Orendt
The monk – Stephan Rügamer
The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbone
The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: © Stephan Rabold

150 years on from the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, we could be forgiven for lamenting this world still does not know what to do with him and his music. The most important of twentieth-century composers, he languishes respected yet for the most part unperformed. The muted tones in which even this, his anniversary year, is being celebrated – if not now, then when? – are such that it could readily be missed altogether. There are exceptions, not least my friends and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center; I am referring essentially to the world of musical performance—and listening. And just perhaps here also in Berlin, second of Schoenberg’s three major cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has long seemed a lost cause.) Not so much in the city as a whole: we search in vain for contributions from its opera houses – surely things would have been different, were Daniel Barenboim still at the helm of the Staatsoper – and indeed from most of its orchestras, yet in the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at least see in the foyer a little exhibition, mounted in conjunction with the ASC, and here we have now also heard the first of several contributions planned from the orchestra. 

If they continue even to approach the level of this instalment, all will not be lost. The First Chamber Symphony offered a splendid way to start. It was the first live Schoenberg I heard, travelling down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Prom; I think it was actually the first piece on the programme, so the first notes I heard at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, indeed in London, were Schoenberg’s. An attempt at comparison would be pointless: I cannot remember much other than that, even then, it impressed me greatly. But this is therefore a work with which I have lived for a while, and of which I have heard a number of fine performances since that CBSO Prom with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one next door at the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this same orchestra as the Scharoun Ensemble and Pierre Boulez). Today’s Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko have little to fear from even the most exalted comparisons, but it is better simply to consider their performance on its own terms. 

In some ways the most conservative – in the proper rather than the debased, contemporary sense – of revolutionaries and surely the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced, that historical position readily conveyed here in immanent, performing terms. For a work so sunny and life-affirming, it is haunted by ghosts, many of whom cheerfully partook of this particular feast. First up, in the opening bars, was Richard Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as much chamber music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or indeed symphonic poem). Brahmsian developing variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that owed much to both, and of course Lisztian formal inheritance were to the fore, but through the particular material and character of this piece; it never felt like anything other than itself, though there was to be heard something of a more traditional, darkly ‘German’ sound and warmth to the ensemble than might often have been the case from Petrenko’s two immediate predecessors, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit without sacrifice to clarity and balance. So assured was the latter that one might almost have forgotten what an astonishingly difficult feat it is to bring off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating detail – sepulchral, Alberich-like playing from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of Pierrot-laughter from Kilian Herold’s clarinet – was present to an extent sometimes difficult to believe, but always within a sure and malleable sense of the whole. The development truly developed, showing Schoenberg as heir to Beethovenian struggle. The ‘lightness’ of the beginning of the ‘slow movement’ offered a surprising presentiment of the ‘air of another planet’ soon to be experienced in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, prior to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No performance of this complex piece can be perfect; it contains more than can ever be achieved in a single performance. This came closer than most.   

True revelation, though, came with Die Jakobsleiter. So seldom is this extraordinary work heard that I cannot have been the only audience member hearing it live for the first time. I had thought I knew this incomplete oratorio well enough, yet such were the strength and all-round excellence of this performance that I realised I had hardly known it at all. Indeed, not the least of my realisations was that one cannot really begin to know it other than through live performance. Recordings, however excellent, can barely suggest the spatial dimension – here the hall came into its own as much as the performers – nor, more important still, the overwhelming power and conviction inherent in the work and any performance worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of what ensued: musical expression first, words from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel next. ‘Whether right or left, forward or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt, harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Idea. Just as important, its colours, not only orchestral (though the inheritance of the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 was thrillingly apparent) but vocal too, not least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Chorus, individual and as a mass. Instrumental lines, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and further developed here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly communicative, already pointing to elements of the world of Moses und Aron. A well-nigh flawless cast of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations. Again, the variety of colours and expressive gestures within a single performance, be it that of the increasingly Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the dark, rich Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anyone else had to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that too representational a characterisation? – was brought still more vividly to life that was both fleeting and aspirant to the eternal.

All the while, we moved, after Swedenborg, upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, instruments and voices surrounding us as if truly from the heavens. This was less the air of another planet than of another dimension, music and post-Wagnerian, post-Mahlerian redemption above, beyond, around us. This was a magic unlike anything I had yet heard. Part of our world, then, does know what to do with Schoenberg and his music. May it serve as an example to the rest.