Salzburg Festival (3) - Zagorinskaja/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling - Cerha, Kurtág, and Webern, 6 August 2016

Kollegienkirche, Salzburg

 

Cerha – Les Adieux (Elegie) (2005, rev. 2007)

Kurtág – Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova, op.17 (1981)

Webern – Six Orchestral Pieces, op.6 (1909, rev. for chamber ensemble, 1920)

Cerha – Bruchstück, geträumt (2009)

Natalia Zagorinskaya (soprano)

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

 

The Salzburg Festival here paid tribute, in Fischer von Erlach’s Kollegienkirche, to Friedrich Cerha and György Kurtág in their ninetieth birthday years. We heard two relatively recent works by the Austrian composer, alongside acknowledged masterpieces by Kurtág and Anton Webern: the ‘threshold’, as Pierre Boulez once put it, for music of the second half of the twentieth century – and beyond.

 

Les Adieux (Elegie) was the first of the Cerha works. Its extremity might have sounded post-Webern, but the language owed at least as much, perhaps more, to Berg. At any rate, one was made to listen, in a compelling performance from Klangforum Wien and Sylvain Cambreling. It was a performance between as well as of the notes. Fragmentary melodies, sometimes melodies rather more than fragmentary, whether taking their ordering principles from pitch or from colour, insinuated themselves. Woodwind lines at times took on an arabesque quality. There were some extraordinary chords, ‘in themselves’: both their harmony, and their spacing: like Bruckner, perhaps, in a way, but in a – mercifully – more compact time-frame.

 

Kurtág’s Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova has been with us now for thirty-five years, since its 1981 premiere in Paris, conducted by Boulez. For all the obvious, indeed wondrous, influence of and reaction to Webern – perhaps ‘Webern precedent’ would be better – there was, I thought, also more than a hint of Berg again, especially Lulu, and especially in the vocal line, here delivered and interpreted with authority and imagination by Natalia Zagorinskaya. Perhaps the Schoenberg of Pierrot lunaire too? What a splendid pairing that would make for a concert! At any rate, there was on occasion a hint, never overdone, of cabaret to the proceedings. The dialectical relationship between these twenty-one miniatures, the three parts, and the whole (again, how could one not think of Pierrot?) manifested itself in performance through the surprise of the moment and concern, not least from Cambreling, for the longer line. The virtuosity of Kurtág’s writing was relished by all concerned, as, I thought, was the feminine-feminist standpoint almost forced upon the composer, which is not necessarily to say unwillingly, by Rimma Dalos’s verse. The opening of the second part, ‘Something erotic’, sounded as if it were bathed in ever-transforming moonlight. What a panoply of colours, all silver, yet never quite silver, we heard: it was luminous, angry, frenetic, calm, all with a well-nigh Mozartian profusion of melody.

 

It was fascinating to hear Webern’s op.6 Six Pieces in this context, and in their 1920 chamber ensemble arrangement: not least for what the arrangement told us about what Webern thought about his instrumental lines. The first piece was admirably long-breathed, with a splendidly post-Mahlerian violin solo. The second, ‘Bewegt’, perhaps sounded more similar to its predecessor than it would usually do – at least until it did not. I was put in mind of the ‘obligate Rezitativ’ from Schoenberg’s op.16 Pieces. Viola and harmonica offered a beguiling opening to the third. The Funeral March sounded more transformed than any of its companion pieces, and yet retained its character; it overwhelmed, if anything, even more than it would with full orchestra. Drum rolls, an exquisite, desperate clarinet solo, a harmonium whose sound, not unlike an 8 ft Choir organ stop, suggested something of the acoustic as a whole. Both the fifth and sixth pieces were properly imbued with aftershock. Reconstruction and lament in the latter, crowned by, or submerged, in bells, had me hear the entire work anew.

 

Finally, we heard Cerha’s Bruchstück, geträumt. Opening high violin and viola harmonics had me think of Mahler’s First Symphony, although with no tonality – at least yet – implied. As other instruments joined this dream-landscape, a fuller harmonic spectrum emerged: especially interesting to hear after Webern’s Pieces. Berg, too, once again came to mind, and not just, I think, because of Cerha’s Lulu completion. Indeed, I genuinely thought of Berg first and the completion second in this case. There was a persistent sense of unfolding, both for work and performance: development, if you like, and more Mahler than Bruckner. Climaxes were unerringly well-placed. The intriguing antiphonal counterpoint between harp and plucked piano strings made its point in – yes, dreamlike fashion. If I were less sure about the final resolution, I should happily give the work another hearing.

 

Wien Modern (5) - Hodges/Widmann/ORF SO/Cambreling - Mundry, Andre, and Saunders, 19 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna

Isabel Mundry – Non-Places, a Piano Concerto (2012, Austrian premiere)

Mark Andre - … hij … 1 (2010, Austrian premiere)
Rebecca Saunders – Still (2011)

Nicolas Hodges (piano)

Carolin Widmann (violin)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

 

Another Wien Modern concert in which women composers outnumbered men. We are getting there, it seems – I hesitate to say that we are ‘there’, wherever that might be – with respect to New Music, although there is a long way to go in honouring female composers of the past. (Barbara Strozzi is a current cause of mine; I am sure most of you will have others. And there are, of course, real problems in other respects.) Part of the answer, to many problems, is of course to have a far healthier balance between contemporary musical production and outings from the museum. Festivals such as Wien Modern help enormously, and the turn out for this concert was very encouraging; but every orchestra, every hall, every musician, every audience member should think about the bizarrely narrow ‘repertoire’ that suffocates us.

Isabel Mundry’s Non-Places, a Piano Concerto, drew me in, although I really felt that I needed at least another hearing to grasp where it had taken me. (That is a criticism of me, rather than of the work, I hasten to add; I should certainly like to have another opportunity.) Untuned percussion leads us to orchestral chatter – passages, I learned later, from Oswald Egger – and laughter. Such unexpected sounds, alternating, combining, mutually transforming, certainly had me sit up and listen (and watch!) Various orchestral instruments sound amongst the chatter. It is actually quite a while until the piano enters, almost as if we were hearing a conventional opening ritornello. When the piano does enter, it is not in obviously soloistic fashion; indeed, the work progresses more as a chamber or ensemble piece than what we might have learned to expect from a piano concerto. It is clearly a challenging work for all concerned, but Nicolas Hodges, the ORF SO, and Sylvain Cambreling all did an excellent job. The pianist’s despatch of, for instance, repeated notes, a repeated device in different yet clearly related guises, was everything one might hope for. Moods vary, as do textures. I was especially captivated by duetting between plucked piano strings and cimbalom: a visual as well as an aural spectacle. Other instruments, whether percussion or strings, act as the changing orchestra alongside the two apparent soloists. There was in work and performance very much a sense of a varied yet single span.

 

I am afraid I could not make much of Mark Andre’s  … hij … 1. I admit that I am becoming a little impatient with works in which instrumentalists ‘play’ but make no sound; it certainly has an element of theatre to it, and here, at least, sounds occasionally emerge from the silence, but it is a device that has quickly become clichéd. Alas, most of what I heard fell under the heading of cliché. Although doubtless very well performed – there is no doubting the prowess of this orchestra, nor its commitment – ultimately, it sounded a bit like a minimalist attempting to ape Lachenmann (and not getting very far). There are some nice touches, for instance percussion emerging out of what I suppose we must call the ‘extended techniques’ of not playing or barely playing. Likewise, I felt that rhythm emerged from that opening too. I could not discern, though, why the orchestra – or rather piano and wind – suddenly start playing ‘normally’, nor why they stop. Sudden shifts, whether of tempo or instrumentation, do not seem to signify anything in particular. It felt, I am sad to say, interminable.

That could certainly not be said of Rebecca Saunders’s Still, for which the ever-outstanding Carolin Widmann joined the orchestra. (I learned afterwards that the piece is dedicated to her, and that it was premiered by Widmann and Cambreling, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.) Still came as a relief, from the very opening violin solo, which somehow imparted a sense of a work and performance that knew exactly where they were going, even if we did not (yet). In many ways, it sounded more like a traditional concertante piece than Mundry’s work. The orchestra engages with the soloist, and vice versa, such interaction continuing, echoing, contrasting; that held for the performance as well as the work. One aspect of the writing that especially caught my ear was the timbral transformation of particular pitches, inevitably bringing, even so many years hence, Webern to mind. Widmann’s rendition of the solo part had me wondering what it would be to hear her in Bach or Schoenberg; indeed, there is something pre- or (slightly) post-Romantic to a role one might call obbligato. (I thought at times of Schoenberg’s op.47 Phantasy for violin and piano.) There was true emotional as well as intellectual depth here. Despite the increasing value – if indeed in such post-modern times we are permitted to speak of æsthetic worth – awarded performance art, installations, and the like, this seemed triumphantly to underline the ongoing importance of the musical work, whether as concept or, perhaps more importantly, as experience.

Fidelio, Opéra national de Paris, 18 December 2008

Palais Garnier

Don Fernando – Paul Gay
Don Pizarro – Alan Held
Florestan – Jonas Kaufmann
Leonore – Angela Denoke
Rocco – Kurt Rydl
Marzelline – Julia Kleiter
Jaquino – Ales Briscein
First Prisoner – Jason Bridges
Second Prisoner – Ugo Rabec

Johan Simons (director)
Jan Versweyveld (scenery and lighting)
Greta Goiris (costumes)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Winfried Maczewski)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

This was the best Fidelio I have seen in the theatre. By far the best performance I have heard in the flesh was a concert performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, but the others, all in the opera house, were all let down by a variety of factors, not least by, though not restricted to, their conductors. Certain musicians notwithstanding, ours does not seem to be an age that responds well to Beethoven. I am, then, delighted to report that this new Paris production, whilst far from perfect, was much better than reports had led me to expect.

For one thing – and, when it comes to Beethoven this is a very big thing indeed – the orchestra was on excellent from. It had weight, so often lacking nowadays in this music; it had rhythmic security; nor was it without human tenderness. Sylvain Cambreling, the unofficial house conductor, presented a controversial version of the score. Opening with the least-known Leonore overture, no.1, he proceeded to restore an earlier plan, whereby Beethoven proceeded from aria, to duet, to trio, to quartet, stressing an underlying original tonality of C major. There seems to be something of a fashion for tampering with Fidelio at the moment; the Hungarian State Opera did so earlier this season. I was not ultimately persuaded by Cambreling’s decisions but at least they had some rationale behind them. And how many opportunities is one likely to have to hear Leonore I in the theatre? At least we were spared the dramatic nonsense, again perpetrated in Budapest, of Leonore III during the second act. (And yes, I am well aware of the illustrious roll-call of conductors who once followed this practice. Yet what Mahler or Furtwängler might have been able to get away with is best disregarded by mere mortals.) Moreover, whilst there were certain tempi decisions with which I might have disagreed, for instance an excessively fast, even carefree first act March, Cambreling spared us the indignities of metronomic ‘authenticity’. There was even the odd occasion when I thought him a little slow. It was welcome to hear ‘O namenlose Freude!’ as something other than the typical unmusical rush, but starting at the speed it did, it should have gathered momentum at some point. As I said above, Colin Davis remains hors concours from my otherwise disappointing live experience of the work. Yet Cambreling’s reading was vastly superior to the dullness of Richard Hickox (English National Opera), to Antonio Pappano (Royal Opera), less out of his depth than failing even to enter the Beethovenian shallows, or to the straightforwardly inappropriate veering towards Rossini (!) of Ádám Fischer (Budapest). The great recorded legacy remains, of course, another matter entirely.

There was another controversial aspect to the version of Fidelio presented. Gérard Mortier, in honour of whose sixty-fifth birthday the first performance of this production was mounted, had decided that the spoken dialogue was nowadays of dubious theatrical value. Alternative dialogue was therefore commissioned from Martin Mosebach. I am not at all sure that there is anything especially wrong with what we usually hear – for one thing, its familiarity has made it part of our expectation of ‘the work’ – but I was quite sure that this was no improvement. Some of it was perfectly acceptable, although even then I could not quite understand why it should be preferred. However, it made for a considerably longer evening than otherwise might have been, not least given the typical inability – this goes for every performance of Fidelio I have attended, bar that in English – of the non-Germans in the cast to speak the language with credibility. One can generally hear every word, partly because it is spoken at half-speed. Some of the new text was also rather peculiar. At the beginning, we hard Marzelline ponder at some length over what sort of man she would prefer. Having considered the hairier option, she proceeded to wonder about a man who was more like a woman. The difficulty of accepting Leonore’s disguise as Fidelio may detain literal-minded souls, but I am not sure that broaching a ‘bi-curious’ interpretation of Marzelline would have assisted them.

The production was in general convincing. It was not unforgettable, but nor was it married to an irrelevant concept or concepts. (I think here of Balázs Kovalik’s production in Budapest, where all sorts of odd ideas did battle against one other.) The surveillance cameras in a sinister control room during the first act pointed to a terrifying feature of our own society. Florestan was always being watched, just as we are. And what went on around? People attended to their ‘daily lives’ – for such, of course, is the dramatic material of the first half of the first act – some of them doubtless quite sure that, in their accustomed Daily Mail-speak, they had ‘nothing to hide’. How many days’ detention without trial would New Labour have inflicted upon Florestan? Ask Pizarro. Of course, Johan Simons is unlikely to have had specifically British references in mind, but the point is increasingly general in Western societies; it is just rather more advanced in my own. There was a contrasting timelessness to the dungeon scene. Whilst there is, of course, a place for specific references and we can hardly fail to think of Guantánamo, it is worth reminding ourselves that such obscenities can happen at any time, in any place. The willingness of human beings to torture has been reaffirmed through scientific experiment; it is part of the role of culture, of works such as Fidelio, to make us rise above such barbarism.

In the title role, Angela Denoke sometimes struggled vocally. There were moments when her voice was simply not strong enough, although not so many as I had expected from other reports. However, she responded readily to the text – both spoken and sung – and brought her considerable skills as a singing actress to the role. Whilst this was not a performance I should wish simply to hear on a recording, I was often gripped by it on stage. Alan Held oozed malevolence as Don Pizarro, though I thought his hysterical laughter overdone and strangely camp: more Rocky than Rocco Horror. Kurt Rydl was a late substitute for Franz-Josef Selig as the jailkeeper. He acted splendidly: quite an achievement, when he could hardly have had close acquaintance with the production. However, he exhibited considerable wobble. I also found it dramatically odd to have so much blacker a voice in this role than for Pizarro. (Admittedly, that is not a problem confined to this production.) Julia Kleiter and Ales Briscein were lively and attentive as Marzelline and Jaquino, whilst Paul Gay impressed as Don Fernando.

But the undoubted star of the show was Jonas Kaufmann. I cannot imagine that there has ever been a better Florestan. He exhibited a heroism to rival that of Jon Vickers, albeit without the vocal oddness. Kaufmann displayed an an astonishing range, not only of dynamics, but also of timbre. The crescendo upon his first note, delivered head down to the floor, starting off mezza voce and leading up to a radiant, ringing, yet never crude fortissimo, was something I suspect I shall never experience again – unless, of course, it comes from him. He managed to sound utterly credible both as a starved, tortured prisoner and as a virile incarnation of freedom. Moreover, his acting was on an equally exalted level, marrying perfectly with the vocal portrayal. This Fidelio, even had it lacked other virtues, would have been justified by Jonas Kaufmann alone.