Aimard/Philharmonia/Honeck - Weber, Beethoven, and Dvořák, 2 February 2025

Royal Festival Hall

Weber: Overture: Der Freischütz
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor, op.37
Dvořák: Symphony no.9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, op.95

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Manfred Honeck (conductor)

Manfred Honeck’s unfussy musicianship has long offered an antidote to crass media veneration of mediocre ‘star’ performers. Much the same might be said of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who, although certainly celebrated, could not stand further removed from the likes of… [I had better stop there]. The Philharmonia, on better form than I have heard it for some time, clearly relished the opportunity to perform with both in this Sunday afternoon concert at the Royal Festival Hall, which also went to show there is life yet in the ‘classic’ overture-concerto-symphony programme, whose popularity may have been attained with good reason. 

Weber’s Freischütz Overture announced a reassuringly large orchestra, sounding very much as ‘of old’. Taken in gorgeously relaxed fashion, the introduction unfolded rather than being harried. Not that it lacked the tension and release of incipient drama, whether in dark, threatening intimations of the Wolf’s Glen or elsewhere, later glorying in the gentlest of lyricism and well-nigh Brucknerian power of silence. 

A smaller Philharmonia, strings thinned by several desks, reassembled for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Aimard at the keyboard. As Donald Tovey observed, the opening movement’s difficulty lies first in the ‘sheer symphonic exposition’ offered by the orchestra; ‘it rouses no expectation of the entry of a solo instrument, and … leaves nothing essential for the pianoforte to add when its time comes.’ Save to the most strenuous musical minds, doubtless counter-productively strenuous, Beethoven saves the day, although a fuller learning of Mozartian lessons, such as we see in very different ways in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, would have avoided the problem in the first place. Why mention this? Because, perhaps through estimable fidelity to the work in all respects, Honeck and Aimard brought that difficulty to the fore, before settling down to a fine performance. Honeck’s ‘first exposition’ was motivically coherent and imparted a strong sense of goal-orientation; but it was only after the piano’s second attempt, as it were, announcing a true partnership between soloist, conductor, and orchestra, that all fell quite into place, the basic tempo slightly broadening in a reading of mutual responsiveness. Aimard’s way with the piano was, as one might have expected, not to be pigeonholed. Neither old-fashioned, nor ‘period’, doubtless modernist in its way, though without shouting about it, it gave a sense of having considered the music anew, without stinting on spontaneity of the moment. The first movement close provided a case in point, suspense and climax working so well because fully prepared from all. 

That disinclination to be categorised was certainly to be heard, if so inclined, in the slow movement too. Shaped rather than moulded, it was always heading somewhere, yet with plenty of space to enjoy what arose during the journey. Possessed of an ultimately long line, yet with much variegation within, it spoke of a Beethoven once again – is he not always? – in transition, in a noble, deeply felt utterance from piano and orchestra alike. Taken attacca, the finale sounded as a necessary response. Occasional slight gear changes might have been better avoided or integrated, but the crucial thing was a feeling of life, of drama. No ‘designer Beethoven’ here. Fortunately, this was not a performance in keeping with a bizarre programme note attributed to Andrew Mellor, reading at best as if the work of ‘artificial intelligence’ (sic): ‘That realisation [of deafness] had a cataclysmic effect on Beethoven as a person and shot entirely new sentiments and concepts into his music, starting with this piece. … Beethoven got wise to that new reality in this piece.’ It is difficult to know where to start with that, so let us instead end by saying performers and audience, let alone Beethoven, deserved far better. In all other respects, they received just that—other programme notes, by Joanna Wyld and Douglas Shadle, included. 

Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony came up similarly fresh, even if I left not quite convinced that elements were strongly integrated enough to avoid accusations – more justly levelled at work than performance – of the episodic. As might be expected, I felt that above all in the finale, though I should not wish to exaggerate. Otherwise, there was much to enjoy from the large orchestral forces reassembled. The first movement’s introduction proved tender and wistful, speaking of both darkness and light; in essence, it told, as surely it must, of many things. Indeed, that movement as a whole proved full of drama, flexible without meandering, musicians at the top of their game both in solo and tutti work. Antiphonal violins had one ask why anyone would ever have considered placing them together. 

Warm, dignified, excellent playing from all, not only but certainly including Henry Clay’s cor anglais, characterised the slow movement: much implied, no overstatement. Horns, as in the Weber, were simply to die for. String playing would have gladdened any of the great conductors from the past who had led this work, whether with the Philharmonia or other orchestras. The scherzo was urgent, perhaps at times a touch hard-driven, yet certainly giving a proper sense of release and relaxing without meandering. Transition to the trio was intriguingly disorienting, suggesting a more ‘modern’ Dvořák than many of us might be used to, material almost dream-like prior to sharpening of focus. The finale was likewise urgent, though not breathless. Tender strings, characterful woodwind, and implacable brass more or less suspended those nagging formal doubts.

Salzburg Festival (4) – Ottensamer/Camerata Salzburg/Viotti: Bartók, Weber, Koncz, and Kodály, 17 August 2019

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Sz 106

Weber: Clarinet Concerto no.1 in F minor, op.73

Stephan Koncz: Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, for clarinet and orchestra

Kodály: Dances of Galánta

Andreas Ottensamer (clarinet)

Camerata Salzburg

Lorenzo Viotti (conductor)

A deeply frustrating concert, this: a fine orchestra and fine soloist, let down by odd programming and, more seriously, a conductor who only intermittently impressed. Mine, it is fair to see, was very much a minority view, the audience rising to give Lorenzo Viotti a standing ovation.

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta opened with great promise, its first movement involving and intriguing. Musically, it was the highpoint of the concert, though the Weber First Clarinet Concerto, a considerably lesser work, could hardly be faulted in performance terms. Veiled yet clear from the outset, the Camerata Salzburg strings grew in muted – and then non-muted – intensity. Viotti guided them with skill and evident commitment, Bartók’s structure readily becoming form. There was a welcome physicality to the second movement, not only concerning rhythmic impact but of bows on strings: once again, the orchestra was on superlative fault. Corners, however, were more of a difficulty, Viotti communicating little of how the movement’s sections were connected, a problem that only increased throughout this admittedly difficult work. Eerie ‘night music’ passages registered vividly in the third movement, which, to be fair, also generated a good deal of harmonic and dramatic suspense, so long as one listened only a section at a time. There was a welcome sense of the dance to the finale, or at least to its opening. Overall line, however, eluded me.

Joined by Andreas Ottensamer for the Weber concerto, the orchestra and Viotti gave what was overall their most satisfying performance. Some might have found Viotti’s moulding of the first movement’s Romantic drama a little much, but it was a perfectly justifiable aesthetic stance to take, evoking responses from Ottensamer both surpassingly virtuosic and intensely dramatic. Phrasing and articulation here and in the remaining two movements were splendidly judged, the slow movement characterised by deeply-felt lyricism, tone variegated without affection, the finale winningly propelled with an Italianate verve that may not have been especially profound, but which was very much in keeping with music that neither asks for nor requires profundity. For Weber music that does, we turns generally to the final three operas, a flash from which – Der Freischütz – opened Stephan Koncz’s Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. As a vehicle for Ottensamer’s virtuosity, it did its trick. Musically, it seemed to me quite without interest, mostly written in a language that would hardly have been avant-garde two hundred years earlier. Not everything need be Helmut Lachenmann, but it is difficult to imagine Weber writing straightforwardly in the style of Monteverdi, minus the content. It went on for too long simply to be a throwaway encore.

As for Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, they have their fans; I remain uncertain quite why. At any rate, they seem dangerous to programme alongside a Bartók masterpiece. Camerata Salzburg’s playing was again beyond reproach, impeccable in balance and blend, heft and subtlety. Viotti responded well to the needs of characterisation. I am not sure his habit of pulling them around did them any favours either, nor his placing emphasis so strongly on the ‘Romantic’ side. They are what they are, though, and the audience clearly enjoyed them, as it did the encore: a swashbuckling account of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance no.1 in G minor.

Der Freischütz, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 28 September 2018

Images: Katrin Ribbe

Ottokar – Roman Trekel

Kuno – Wolfgang Schöne

Agathe – Anna Samuil

Ännchen – Anna Prohaska

Kaspar – Falk Struckmann

Max – Peter Sonn

Hermit – Jan Martiník

Kilian – Adam Kutny

Samiel – Peter Moltzen

Bridesmaids – Verena Allertz, Regina Emersleben-Motz, Konstanze Löwe, Julia Mencke, Claudia Tuch

Michael Thalheimer (director)

Caroline Staunton (revival director)

Olaf Altmann (set designs)

Katrin Lea Tag (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Where it all began: well, not quite, but almost. It was in the newly opened Schauspielhaus no more than five minutes’ walk away on the Gendarmenmarkt that Der Freischütz received its 1821 premiere. Now Schinkel’s theatre serves as the Konzerthaus. Opera, however, continues to be the business of the older Linden house, which, following a somewhat bumpy reopening a year ago, seems now properly to have found its stride once again. Recent highlights for me have included Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Tristan and a revival of Claus Guth’s Frau ohne Schatten, of which I saw the dress rehearsal earlier in September, under the excellent – I should probably say ‘outstanding’ – revival direction of Caroline Staunton. This revival of Michael Thalheimer’s Freischütz stood also in her more than capable hands. Since this was my first viewing of this production, I cannot comment on any changes that might – or might not – have taken place. It stood very well indeed, however, on its own terms: a highly accomplished company performance.

In contrast, say, to Christian von Götz’s production for Leipzig, whose premiere I saw last year, this staging does not seem especially interested in the status of Weber’s opera as icon of German Romanticism. There is, whether we like it or no, darkness aplenty in such a concept for audiences today, just as there would be for this work’s lovechild, Siegfried, yet such is not the only possibility of darkness. This is more psychoanalytical – and again one can hardly help but think of the implications for that and many other of Wagner’s dramas. For, as Wagner, miserable, lonely, and close to starvation in Paris, wrote on seeing Der Freischütz there, the work ‘seems to be the poem of those Bohemian woods themselves, whose dark and solemn aspect permits us at once to grasp how the isolated man would believe himself, if not prey to a dæmonic power of Nature, then at least in eternal submission thereto.’

Here the action and those ‘woods themselves’ are seen and framed through the barrel of a gun. Sometimes, perhaps, a gun might just be a gun; it is certainly not here, no more than a forest is just a forest. Man, even men, are isolated; so too are woman and women. We look, as if the wrong way through a telescope to some source of light, perhaps even of life; or is it a nightmare? Nightmares certainly emerge from it; do they not always? Is this concerned with fear of or oppression of women? The either/or is irrelevant; we see, as the tale of a more or less bartered bride progresses, how it is both. We also see how her virginal white, hypocritically valued yet brutally blooded, is both ‘the story’ and anything but. Who dreams up Samiel, who plays a far more important role than usual, here? Wagner saw the work with Berlioz’s recitatives. Here the usual dialogue is rejected or modified in a different way, Thalheimer providing his own – convincing, I think, on its terms – to further and indeed to provoke the enhanced role of this ‘daemonic power’ (in Wagner’s words). Absurd – in a context of realism – stage directions, which seem quite to have confounded that first Berlin production, could therefore be reimagined, the forest and its spirit giving birth to a bestial array of animals without having a Wild Hunt embarrassingly traipse across stage.

Thomas Guggeis impressed me greatly this spring, standing in at the very last minute to make his house debut in Salome – and rightly receiving plaudits for having done so. On this occasion, it seems, he had a little longer if not so very long to prepare to replace another indisposed conductor. This was perhaps the sterner test, since he was more of a known quality and less of a hero of the moment. Whatever the truth of that, he once again emerged with great credit. For one so young – for one of any age – he seems instinctively, however much craft such ‘instinct’ might hide, to know how to ‘play’ this great orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin. It obliged with its statutory dark, ‘old German’ sound, apparently untouched by the ravages of Western orchestral homogenisation. It might have been the orchestra that played for Furtwängler – or, indeed, that does for Barenboim. There was no stiffness to Guggeis’s direction: quite the contrary. Difficult balances were always well struck: between the Romantically ‘organic’ and the needs of the number opera, of the moment too, between Mozartian inheritance  and Wagnerian future – clarinet solos standing out as much as horn calls – and between ‘French’ and ‘German’. We should never forget, however often German nationalists may have wished to do so, that the Huntsmen’s Chorus is based upon an eighteenth-century French street song, ‘Malbrouk [Marlborough] s’en va t’en guerre’.

Moreover, the grandeur and ambition of work, production, and orchestral performance notwithstanding, not to forget the work of the excellent chorus, there was something winningly intimate, in the opéra comique tradition to what we saw and heard from the singers on stage. That is not to suggest a lack of vocal scale, but simply to point to their convincing performances as characters on stage. If Roman Trekel and Wolfgang Schöne both proved somewhat dry and stiff, the rest of the cast more than compensated. Peter Sonn’s Max was fresh toned, enthusiastic, vulnerable, Falk Struckmann’s Kasper very much his dark, virile antagonist (even, in this context, alter ego?) Anna Samuil gave perhaps the strongest performance I have heard from her as Agathe, exhibiting a fine sense, scenic and vocal, of tragic catastrophe before the last. Anna Prohaska’s more colourful, spirited Ännchen, despatched words and coloratura not only with ease but with intent and meaning. Performed in this new ‘version’ without an interval, the work emerged, Goldilocks-like, just right: neither too short nor too long. That, however, should remain a dark fairy-tale for another day.

BERGfrühling (1) – Schubert, Weber, and Berg, 10 May 2018

Alban Berg Saal, Carinthian Music Academy, Ossiach

Schubert: Quintet in A major, D 667, ‘Trout’

Weber: Trio for flute, cello, and piano in G minor, op.63

Berg, arr. Martyn Harry: Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’ (world premiere)

Alban Berg Ensemble Wien (Sylvia Careddu (flute), Alexander Neubauer (clarinet)

Ariane Haering (piano), Sebastian Gürtler, Régis Bringolf (violins), Subin Lee (viola), Florian Berner (cello))

Ivan Kitanović (double bass)

The Vienna-based Alban Berg Ensemble is hosting its first BERGfrühling (Berg Spring) festival, in Ossiach, home to the Carinthian Music Academy, close to the Berg family estate, aptly enough called the Berghof, where the young Alban would spend his summer holidays. Four out of the five concerts will take place in the CMA’s Alban Berg Saal, a splendid new hall with an excellent acoustic, three with a work by Berg on the programme, the other with a piece by his fellow Schoenberg pupil, Webern; the fifth, a performance of a Dvořák’s G major String Quintet, op.77, will be heard in the parish church of St Georg, in nearby Sternberg. (Whether referring to mountains or composers, the word ‘Berg’ is rarely far away here.)

It was with, Schubert, one of the most indispensable forerunners of the Second Viennese School, that the festival opened, members of the ensemble joined by double bass player Ivan Kitanović for the Trout Quintet. The resonance of that bright A major chord, piano arpeggio included, seemed to announce both ensemble and acoustic in one: as it should be. A cultivated yet clear sound characterised a first movement full of tension, yet never aggressively so, the second group relaxed in the best sense, permitting a further increase of tension to propel us into the serious business of development. Modulations retained, or better revealed, their magic. Harmonic tension built and then exhausted itself, not unlike Mendelssohn, the onset of the recapitulation almost yet not quite imperceptible. A poised, almost chaste Andante sounded in almost neo-Classical style (vis-à-vis Mozart, that is, rather than anything Stravinskian!) It made me listen – and think. And yet, was it not too late for chastity? Such was subtly hinted at too, especially as the movement progressed. A propulsive reading of the scherzo, not without Beethovenian affinities – elective or otherwise – was counterbalanced by a somewhat neutral trio, but perhaps that was the point.

Having seen the wondrous Ossiacher See only that afternoon – the Abbey, now the Academy, stands by the lake – it was especially lovely to welcome the freshwater fish of the fourth movement theme and variations, here characterful, without overstatement. Well seasoned, one might say. There was plenty of time and space left to build, preparing for true vehemence in the minore fourth variation. I loved cellist Florian Berner’s shaping of his melody in the fifth: aristocratic, without aloofness. The final variation took us to the coffee house: where better a place to round off proceedings? The finale seemed, almost likewise, to hint at Brahms, whilst rightly remaining very much of its own time. Our tragedy, as well as its, may well be to be too late for Mozart; yet, as Brahms would counsel, there are sometimes worse things than lateness.

Weber’s trio for flute, cello, and piano, op.63 is an engaging, if sometimes perplexing, oddity. The first movement proved more fantasia- than sonata-like, likewise the finale. It was often not entirely clear what the material was doing where it was, nor how their tonal structure might operate. And yet, even there, there were hints of something darker, more Freischütz-like. The second movement scherzo benefited from nicely sprung rhythms and a pleasing semi-rusticity for its ‘trio’ material. Those two tendencies are more bound together in a single dance – and here, the music certainly danced. A beautifully posed ‘Schäfers Klage’ (‘Shepherd’s Lament’) was the highpoint, subtle in its navigation between Classical and Romantic tendencies – as one must be in Weber, or Schubert for that matter. It is a truly fascinating movement, all the more so in so illuminating a performance as this.

For the final work, we turned to Berg: to the world premiere of Martyn Harry’s arrangement for the ensemble of the composer’s own Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’, echoing the celebrated performances of Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. The opening sounded on a knife-edge, between something frozen and molten lava: not unlike Bartók, perhaps. A labyrinth opened up before our ears, making us listen and listen anew, to find our way around something we thought we knew, yet perhaps did not after all. Indeed, for the first two fragments at least, I listened in more ‘abstract’ fashion, less heedful of the plot. Clarinet echoes from Berg’s op.5 Four Pieces led us, via Pierrot lunaire, so it seemed, into a whirling martial vortex: even here, the Captain seemed more an ‘instrumental character’ than reminiscence of a stage performance. The flute sang too, duetting, engaging with other instruments, bringing the ensemble to life – or perhaps to death.

In the second fragment, the viola came to the front: literally, Subin Lee acting as our instrumental Marie. Eloquent, even desperate, she (Marie, the viola, the violist?) remained splendidly collegiate; this was always true chamber music. In some ways, the music’s context within Berg’s instrumental œuvre came to seem clearer, or at least newly, even differently, emphasised. Curiously – in the best sense – enigmatic, it was very much the centre-piece to an aural triptych. Marie confounded us again, or perhaps Berg did, or Harry: surely, in practice as well as in theory, all three did. The drowning music with which the final fragment opens sounded properly hallucinatory, lulling, drawing us in as society draws in future Wozzecks. The ‘D-minor-ness’ of what followed somehow sounded underlined, its richness not quite that of nineteenth-century chamber music: perhaps, rather, of that music remembered, as both cage and liberation for Berg. Alexander Neubauer’s clarinet deputised for the children’s song to follow: childlike or childish? Certainly sardonic. The halt to which the music came chilled, as ever.

Widmanns/Kozhuhkin - Schoenberg, Weber, and Bartók, 5 May 2017

Pierre Boulez Saal

Schoenberg – Fantasie, for violin with piano accompaniment, op.47

Weber – Grand Duo concertant, in E-flat major, op.48
Weber – Piano Sonata no.3 in D minor, op.49
Bartók – Contrasts, Sz.111

Carolin Widmann (violin)

Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

One ends up saying that almost every Schoenberg work is ‘extraordinary’ – or at least I do. Such enthusiasm is perhaps not entirely a bad thing for one at work writing not just one but two books concerning the composer and his music, but it needs to be kept in check, lest one end up sounding a bit too much like a contemporary Radio 3 presenter. Nevertheless, the Fantasie for ‘violin with piano accompaniment’ – Schoenberg actually wrote the violin part in its entirety before the piano part – continues at the very least to surprise, on those few occasions when musicians bother to perform it. For that alone, thanks would be due to Carolin Widmann and Denis Kozhukhin, but these were scrupulous performances indeed, taking on board both Schoenberg’s somewhat strange description and the work’s nature as a fantasia, not least its inspiration in Mozart’s essays in the genre, tonal and formal implications there to be heard without pedantic exaggeration. At first, I wondered whether Kozhukhin was proving a little reticent, but it was who I was in the wrong; his ‘accompanying’ role, neither over- nor understated, brought Schoenberg’s constructivism to the fore, Widmann’s greater fantasy very much the other side to the coin. One heard, moreover, the passing of motifs between instruments, without that suggesting a misleading equivalence: a very difficult balance, or rather ordering, to maintain, especially in music so febrile, so ever-transformative as this. (Whatever I might say about it will over-simplify.) Echoes of the old and their transformation sounded very much at the heart of the music and its progress. So too as an overflowing lyricism such as one often hears in Schoenberg: the problem for many, it seems, is not so much a lack of ‘tunes’ as far too many, a twentieth-century reinstatement of Mozart’s own ‘problem’ (with apologies to an apocryphal Joseph II). The ending surprised as much as ever, whether one ‘knew’ or not.

I try with Weber’s instrumental music; I really do. Alas, odd points of contact notwithstanding, I find it difficult to credit that a piece such as the Grand Duo concertant for clarinet and piano is by the composer of Euryanthe. Yes, it is earlier, yes I know we are fashionably supposed to take an interest in virtuosity for its own sake (or have we now gone beyond that in ‘nineteenth-century studies’?); but really… Carolin Widmann was replaced by her brother, Jörg. There was no doubting his virtuosity, nor indeed that of Kozhukhin. This, however, is a piece in which a very different form of inequality between instruments makes for much less satisfying, much less interesting listening. Ironically, or perhaps not, the occasional sighing phrases in the first movement’s piano part registered far more sympathetically than all the passagework in the world, whichever part it were in. (The piano part often sounds oddly as if it were an orchestral reduction.) There are lovely moments, but nothing more than that, and a degree of note-spinning, above all in the finale, which makes the likes of Hummel sound profound. That the slow movement was a little darker offered some relief.

Weber’s Third Piano Sonata followed the interval, offering Koshukhin, at least in the first and second movements, something more to get his musical teeth into. Allegro feroce is the marking for the first movement, and feroce the first group certainly was, the advent of the second as melting as anyone could hope for. There was perhaps even the odd hint of a soprano aria from one of the operas, with in a general ‘early Romantic’, non-Beethovenian framework. If there is a bit too much ‘more of the same’, Kozhukhin did what he could. He charmed, moreover, in the Andante con moto second movement, even in its more turbulent passages – which is probably as it should be. The range of colours drawn from the instrument in the finale was quite something, even if its musical substance were more dubious. I was soon longing for Beethoven. An oddity I noted only at the end: was the ordering of an op.47, an op.48, and an op.49 a coincidence?

With Bartók’s Contrasts, involving all three musicians, we turned to a masterpiece of the highest order. The first movement’s performance caught to perfection its fantastical gawkiness (perhaps a hint of Schoenberg’s opening piece, perhaps not) and equally its slinky eroticism. Not for nothing was this written for Benny Goodman. Contours were well traced, with equally keen projection of metre. Kozshukhin’s (at times) almost Schubertian way with the piano part of the first movement intrigued; it made me wonder what he might do with the piano concertos. Jörg Widmann’s virtuosity was put to still more startling and certainly much better use. The second movement was very much the heart of the performance, rich clarity offering a truly tripartite partnership. Line was just as clear, as goal-directed, as in Beethoven. The opening to the third movement suggested the Devil himself (or herself, in this case) tuning up, proving contagious both to clarinet and piano in turn. Once again, virtuosity was attuned throughout to properly musical ends, in performances as impressive for their flexibility as for their respect once again for metre. There was longing too, perhaps suggestive of the beginning of American exile for the composer – although is that to sentimentalise? At any rate, this was an awe-inspiring performance, as exciting as it was thoughtful: perhaps the best I have ever heard. A movement from The Soldier’s Tale made for an encore as enjoyable and, again, as exciting as it was apt.

Der Freischütz, Oper Leipzig, 4 March 2017

Leipzig Opera House

Samiel (Verena Hierholzer) and Kaspar (Tuomas Pursio)
Images: © Ida Zenna

 

Agathe – Gal James

Ännchen – Magdalena Hinterdobler
Samiel – Verena Hierholzer
Max – Thomas Mohr
Kaspar – Tuomas Pursio
Kuno – Jürgen Kurth
Kilian – Patrick Vogel
Ottokar – Jonathan Michie
Hermit – Rúni Brattaberg
First Hunter – Andreas David
Second Hunter – Klaus Bernewitz
Bridesmaids – Katrin Braunlich, Estelle Haussner, Eliza Rudnicka, Teresa Maria Winkler
 

Christian von Göltz (director)

Dieter Richter (set designs)
Jessica Karge (costumes)
Heidi Zippel (dramaturgy)
Verena Hierholzer (Samiel’s choreography)

Leipzig Opera Chorus (chorus master: Alexander Stessing)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Christian Gedschold (conductor)

 

Agathe (Gal James) in front of the assembled company

‘It seems to be the poem of those Bohemian woods themselves, whose dark and solemn aspect permits us at once to grasp how the isolated man would believe himself, if not prey to a dæmonic power of Nature, then at least in eternal submission thereto.’ With those words, the homesick, indigent Richard Wagner, revolted by what he had experienced as the base superficiality of Parisian musical culture, reported on an 1841 performance of Le Freischütz (Berlioz’s version, with ballet music that was at least Weber’s own). In a piece addressed ‘to the Paris public’, Wagner ostensibly tried to explain the work to that public, yet seemed unable to prevent himself from turning his article into an attack upon – yes, you have guessed correctly – Parisian and, more broadly, French culture.

Kaspar, Samiel and her spirits, Max (Thomas Mohr)

 

The Freischütz (most certainly Der) we know and love is the quintessential German Romantic opera, and Wagner’s advocacy has played no little role in that. Upon returning to Saxony, to Dresden, he assumed a leading role in the longstanding if hitherto unsuccessful campaign to have Weber’s bones returned from London and reburied in the city whose German opera (as opposed to its long-flourishing Italian version) he had done much to build. Wagner eulogised his predecessor with music and a flowery address, proclaiming that there had never been a more German musician. Whilst the younger Wagner had stood far more critical, his first opera, Die Feen notwithstanding, of Weber and earlier German opera, now he placed his work in that tradition, as would others theirs. That is far from nonsense, of course, yet it is also far from unproblematical. For one thing, it is impossible, living in the face of what Friedrich Meinecke called in 1948 the ‘German catastrophe’, to assent to such nationalism any more, however differently it may have been intended. For another, much of Weber’s music, still more than Wagner’s, and perhaps still more in this than in Weber’s subsequent two ‘German Romantic’ operas, often questions, even resists, such identification.

Kaspar and Max

 

Why do I mention all that? Because it was very much in that spirit that, almost whether I wished to or no, I approached this new production of Weber’s opera in Wagner’s home city (itself long ambivalent concerning its greatest son, its concert tradition long, somewhat frustratingly, enjoying a higher profile to the fruits of its still lengthier operatic history). What struck me upon hearing the Overture from the excellent Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Christian Gedschold was, first, how fresh, how vernal (it had been a beautiful, almost spring-day in Leipzig) Weber’s score sounded from every section: the strings an ideal combination of the golden and something darker, the woodwind at times heartbreakingly characterful, almost as if partaking as woodland creatures in Wagner’s fancy, the brass as euphonious as one could hope for, horns tender to a degree. And yet, Gedschold’s direction did not, for me, take its place in the tradition I think of here as ‘German Romantic’: at least not wholeheartedly, or perhaps it was my mindset that had me hear it differently. Where Furtwängler, in his outstanding Salzburg life recording, puts us momentarily at peace, and has it, perhaps, sound more ‘German’ than the music ‘in itself’ always is, where Carlos Kleiber somehow makes his objectively hard-driven Dresden account sound equally at ease with itself, breathing where the tempi might suggest otherwise, this performance sounded more internationalist, perhaps even more at home with the French models Weber – and Wagner – so eagerly adopted in individual numbers. (I mean here a number of the arias and ensemble pieces, although even the Huntsmen’s Chorus, soon to become a staple of German books of allegedly ‘popular song’, actually derives from part of an eighteenth-century French street song, ‘Malbrouk s’en va t’en guerre’.) What sometimes, then, I missed in the seemingly unaffected German Romanticism that would grow into Wagnerian music drama an aural reassessment of the work as the number opera it undoubtedly is.



Opening scene

 

It was with such thoughts that I also set about watching Christian von Götz’s production, in part, I think, on account of his brilliantly thought-provoking Capriccio, in which Strauss’s work engaged with its own time to an extent, and to a fruitful extent, rarely seen. (Such are the perils, as well as the joys, of reception, whether of a composer, a director, or anyone else!) Perhaps, then, I was too preoccupied with understanding what I saw as part commentary on German history, but this is perhaps one of those works in which such a path is inevitable, and ultimately requires no apology. What struck me from its later nineteenth-century setting was how it enables, perhaps even invites, one to consider the work’s Rezeptionsgeschichte. Indeed, to begin with, I understood it more as a deliberately sanitised version of the period of composition, the hunting lodge too spick and span, even too grand (rather as one might visit such a place touristically today, or indeed in the later nineteenth century). Be that as it may, such sanitisation, displacement, alienation, however one might consider it, served to remember the work such as it never was, even if we have ‘always’ known it as such, something of a ghost, setting the scene for what became still more of a ghost story than one often sees.

 

Ännchen (Magdalena Hinterdobler), Agathe, and Samiel

It is here, though, a ghost story with a very particular twist, or at least standpoint. Looking at, if not listening to, Weber from a standpoint not so distant from Mahler (recall Die drei Pintos) and his world – the designs hint as much at Franz Joseph and Bad Ischl as at the Bohemian Woods, at least until we briefly enter the latter – we begin to understand the centrality of female experience to the horror tale unfolding. Fear and hysteria reign, Samiel – here, strikingly, a self-choreographed female dancer, Verena Hierholzer – seemingly a projection of some evil deed from the past, haunting the present, just as untruths from our retelling of history continue to haunt us. (Whatever the tribulations of German history, it is the English who do not have a word for Vergangenheitsbewältigung, resulting recently in a catastrophe that could hardly seem more likely over here.) Noting that the opera was originally to be called Die Jägersbraut, the director plays on Agathe’s fear of marriage, a fear born, it seems, of living in so unhappy, so haunted, a place. Samiel’s delivery of the funeral crown in the third act terrifies all the women; is it not, however, actually the perfect symbol for patriarchal hegemony and the fantasies it encourages? If the horror-film imagery of Samiel’s other appearances seemed more silly than anything else, perhaps it is all too easy for a man to say that in the face of female agency. (I am questioning myself more as Devil’s Advocate here than because I really think so, but the openness of the staging to such self-criticism is perhaps not the least of its strengths.)

Max and Agathe

 

Such would in itself count for much less, had it not been for an excellent cast, whose performances would have graced any stage. If Thomas Mohr, I am afraid to say, looked and acted too much on the old side for Max – however one might have framed the performance – his vocal delivery more than compensated. A tenor bright and clear, yet sensitive too, he complemented very well the sopranos of Gal James and Magdalena Hinterdobler, exhibiting many of the same qualities, and with fine coloratura to boot, Hinterdobler’s especially expressive as well as merely impressive. Tuomas Pursio’s darkly dangerous Kaspar stood very much in the line of other fine performances I have heard him give (from Wagner to Nono), yet there was nothing generic about the malady of his pride and delusion. Jürgen Kurth and Jonathan Michie offered intelligent, verbally acute performances as Kuno and Ottokar, whilst Patrick Vogel’s lighter, nimbler tenor (by comparison with Max) offered ample indication of why he might have won the title of king of the marksmen. Rúni Brattaberg’s dark, sonorous Hermit did what he should, although why anyone should necessarily take heed of the character’s words remains something of a dramaturgical mystery. Choral singing throughout spoke of music well known, 'in the blood', if you will, yet never taken for granted: it was as fresh as it was 'traditional'.

Final scene

 

There was then, plenty, of opportunity to rethink, to reassess, wherever that impulse may have originated. And yet, for everything I have said, and for all the outstanding quality of orchestral instruments’ ‘French’ solo moments (of which there are many), it remained the dark, undeniably Wagnerian tones of the Wolf’s Glen that made the deepest impression of all. Here, Saxon tradition spoke of an orchestra, one of the greatest in the world, that knew where this music led, and which was happy to guide us. Göltz made a better job of staging frankly impossible scenic directions than many (‘Gothic’ horror notwithstanding), but Weber’s extraordinary presentiments of Siegfried remained an aural experience above all. Wagner’s truths may not always be empirical; that does not necessarily render them untruths.

 

Oberon, New Sussex Opera, 25 November 2014

Cadogan Hall

 

 

Oberon – Adam Tunnicliffe

Puck – Siân Griffiths

Sir Huon – Adrian Dwyer

Sherasmin – Damian Thantrey

Reiza – Sally Silver

Fatima – Carolyn Dobbin

Five Fairies – Nisha McIntyer-Burnei, Beatrice Monaco, Michael Diamini, Rachel Farago, Rachel Shouksmith

 

 

Harry Fehr (director)

Charlie Lucas (lighting)

Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

 

 

St Paul’s Sinfonia

New Sussex Opera Chorus

Nicholas Jenkins (conductor)

 

What on earth to do with Oberon, Weber’s last opera, written – are you listening, the Royal Opera? – for Covent Garden? Many consider it to contain his greatest music. I am not sure I should go so far; or, perhaps better, the genre with which Weber was lumbered, made it simply impossible for the music to tell as it should. If we think that Purcell had it bad with the dreadful mess of ‘semi-opera’, at least he had Dryden, although, as Sir Donald Tovey put it, ‘Our first and greatest man of genius in dramatic music was … condemned to inaugurate a tradition whereby English opera consisted of music that merely added a series of lyric and spectacular digressions to a play which, if good at all, would be better without the digressions.’ Weber, alas, had James Robinson Planché, whose libretto for Oberon for Tovey ‘represents an advance on [semi-opera] … inasmuch as the play would not be better without the digressions,’ thus leading up to what, regrettably, remains an unforgettable and largely unarguable claim: Weber ‘poured his last and finest music into this pig-trough.’ A sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream might seem ill-advised at the best of times; this, however, was certainly not the best of times.

 

 

And so, it was a brave and highly laudable decision for New Sussex Opera to stage Oberon. Nothing, I am afraid, can begin to redeem the libretto, whose lack of dramaturgical coherence is truly a thing of wonder. (One is almost left wishing that England had truly been a Land ohne Musik at the time.) Considering a roughly comparable – and far from un-problematical – work, Schubert’s Fierrabras, does not help; but then nothing can, save perhaps for the deconstructionist reimagining production of one’s dreams. Neuenfels or Herheim perhaps? That, of course, is not what we have, or could have have, here. Harry Fehr has limited resources and for the most part elects to play things straight, save, perhaps for some dubious – or dubiously executed? – choreography. Dress is more or less ‘modern’ but not really in the service of any particular ‘concept’. Chairs are perhaps over-used; waving them around to depict a storm seemed on the verge of exhausting some members of the chorus. A few sheets might have done the job better. But Fehr’s is clearly a thankless task and the contours of the drama, such as it is, register clearly enough.

It was a great pity that the orchestra could not have been augmented. (Might not some amateur string players have been found?) A string section of 4.2.2.2.1, even in a smallish hall, is bound, with the best will in the world, to sound undernourished at times for Weber’s score. That said, the players of St Paul’s Sinfonia for the most part responded admirably to Nicholas Jenkins’s sensitive, keenly dramatic traversal. Flexible and cultivated, with plenty of direction: his was a reading worthy both of Weber and of the gamble the company had made in mounting the enterprise. I should be keen to hear more of the conductor in such and indeed other repertoire.

The chorus had some shakier moments but for the most part acquitted itself well, summoning up a good, full sound for the close. Soloists did their best to bring to life the ‘characters’. Adrian Dwyer showed no sign of tiring from the difficult demands of the tenor hero, Sir Huon, offering creditable nobility of tone throughout. Sally Silver coped very well indeed with the loss of a monitor at the beginning of the second act, leaving her unable to see the conductor at all during ‘Ocean! Thou mighty monster!’ If her intonation was not always perfect, slips did not unduly distract, and she again invested the role with a dignity it perhaps does not entirely deserve. Carolyn Dobbin proved a lively Fatima, drawing one in as much as one could reasonably expect. Adam Tunnicliffe’s Oberon sounded destined – and I hope it will be – for a larger hall or theatre. Most importantly, then, we had a good opportunity to experience this opera ‘live’, for which thanks and congratulations should go to New Sussex Opera.

 

 

 

 

Euryanthe, Chelsea Opera Group, 23 November 2013

Cadogan Hall

 

King Louis VI - Richard Wiegold
Adolar - Jonathan Stoughton
Euryanthe - Kirstin Sharpin
Lysiart - Stephen Gadd
Eglantine - Camilla Roberts
Bertha - Melinda Hughes

Chorus of the Chelsea Opera Group (chorus master: Deborah Miles-Johnson)
Orchestra of the Chelsea Opera Group
Cameron Burns (conductor)

 

Poor Weber: opera companies, especially in England, do him anything but proud. And then, at least in the case of Euryanthe and Oberon, there is the matter of the dreadful libretti he had to set – presumably part of the reason why companies are unwilling to perform them. (Oddly, dreadful music seems to be less of a problem, given the lashings endured of Donizetti, Verdi, et al.) The best one can say for Helmina von Chezy’s efforts in Euryanthe is that they are merely awful, as opposed to the execrable text for Oberon.  Lucky Weber, then, to receive such a fine performance as this from the valiant forces of the Chelsea Opera Group.

Conductor Cameron Burns and his excellent cast should receive equal credit for what I have no hesitation in describing as the best COG performance I have heard – by some distance. Burns’s reading ought to have been welcomed with open arms in any opera house; indeed, it would have signalled a marked improvement in most of what we hear.  A refreshingly elegant, unexaggerated style – no frenetic waving around of arms to no evident end – did not in any sense preclude engagement with libretto, whatever its shortcomings, and score alike. It was surely testimony to sound training that soloists and chorus not only enunciated clearly, but for the most part seemed really to mean their words – even when the chorus was compelled to comment, without a trace of irony, that Euryanthe’s alleged betrayal of Adolar was the most grievous deed the world had ever witnessed: ‘ O Unthat, grässlichste von allen,
Die jemals auf der Welt erhört!’ Burns’s handling of Weber’s score was perhaps all the more revelatory, not least since it is about the music that, perforce, we truly care. Line was maintained throughout. Not a single passage sounded unduly hurried or remotely meandering.

The Overture was an interesting case in point. It offered quite a contrast with, say, Karajan’s account, firmly melded into an almost granitic Wagnerian whole as it is – and mightily, even wondrously, impressive. Here, however, we heard a greater variety of moods, textures, and tempi, arguably more faithful to the movement’s role as a potpourri introduction to Weber’s opera (as opposed to Karajan’s concert overture) and to the composer’s conception, without danger of lapsing into the merely sectional. Presentiments – one has to remind oneself that they are not echoes! – of Mendelssohn characterised the very opening, but a darker form of the supernatural made its voice eerily heard in the ghost music. Weber’s musico-dramatic experiments were communicated with apparent ease, boundaries blurred but not obliterated between more old-fashioned set pieces and the ‘forward-looking’ – at least to any self-respecting Wagnerian – treatment of recitative and arioso. Above all, dramatic tension remained tight and proportions simply sounded ‘right’, a far more difficult task to accomplish than many might appreciate.

The chorus sometimes lacked a little in youthful vitality, especially earlier on, yet became more animated as the opera progressed, later sounding impressive indeed in the great close to the second act. Not unfittingly, it was at that point that the orchestra perhaps gained its greatest dramatic heights too, though throughout there was a great deal of impressive solo playing, especially from the woodwind. If only Weber’s clarinet writing were as meaningful in his concertos as it is here; he clearly needed a dramatic impetus to reach the heights of which he was capable. Moreover, the strings, if at times a little reticent earlier on, subsequently showed themselves adept at providing just the right sort of musical cushion for vocal recitatives. I could not help but wish that we had heard Burns at the helm for the COG Die Feen earlier this year, not least since the amount the two works have in common – not solely influence, though there is a good deal of that – became increasingly clear, as indeed did the influences, perceptible yet again not exaggerated, upon Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. (If only, I thought, Weber had had a dramatist such as Wagner to shape the relationship between Lysiart and Eglantine, we might have had a more telling taste still of Ortrud and Telramund. Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, appallingly misunderstood by many critics at Covent Garden last year, also came to mind more than once.)

Kirstin Sharpin’s star shone brightly in the tight role, words and music honoured to equal extent and indeed in fine alchemy. Hers was a portrayal both impassioned and noble, clearly longing to be properly ‘on stage’, yet offering considerable dramatic compensation even in concert. Sharpin’s cleanness of vocal line and dramatic commitment were shared by Camilla Roberts’s Eglantine. Tricky coloratura apparently evoked no fears; more importantly, such ambiguity as the libretto permitted was exploited to its dramatic fullest. Stephen Gadd likewise offered a finely honed portrayal of her accomplice, Lysiart, malevolent and sophisticated – again, insofar as the libretto permitted, but considerably more so than one would have likely have expected. Jonathan Stoughton revealed an often pleasing tenor as Adolar, drawing upon lyric and heroic reserves as required. This is clearly a voice which, if sensibly marshalled, will be in great demand for heroic roles; however, more careful phrasing was sometimes called for on this occasion. Richard Wiegold projected a benevolent voice of experience as the king, and Melinda Hughes’s brief appearance as the country girl, Bertha proved full of charm. All contributed to a performance that was very much more than the sum of its parts. Now will one of our opera companies – ideally, the Royal Opera – kindly take its cue and do its duty by Weber?