Wien Modern (6): Black Page Orchestra – Rykova, Prins, Ivičevič, and Weber, 25 November 2015

Porgy & Bess, Vienna

Elena Rykova – 101% mind uploading (2015, first Austrian performance)

Stefan Prins – Piano Hero #1 (2011-12)
Mirela Ivičevič  - The F SonG (dominosa VII) (2014)
Oliver Weber – Heat Wave (2015, Wien Modern commission, world premiere)
 
Alessandro Baticci (flutes)
Florian Fennes (clarinets, saxophone)
Peter Mayer (electric guitar)
Alfredo Ovalles (piano)
Sofie Thorsbro Dan (violin)
Kaja Farszky (percussion)
Matthias Kranebitter (electronics)

In the beginning was Pli selon Pli: not only a modern(-ist) classic, but one of the very greatest musical works of the twentieth century. At the end – well, not quite the end of Wien Modern, but my final evening – came a late-night event at Porgy & Bess jazz club. Alas, I was only able to stay until the interval; no disrespect was intended to the three works to follow (Brigitta Muntendorf’s Public Privacy #1: Flute Cover, Matthias Kranebitter’s Dead Girl (Requiem E), and Alexander Schubert’s HELLO), nor to the Black Page Orchestra. I nevertheless encountered a provocative few works in the first half, some of which I responded to more keenly than others; new encounters are always, however, preferable to tired exhumations from the museum. Brahms I adore; I should travel a good distance to hear, say, Daniel Barenboim or Bernard Haitink conduct the symphonies. Brahms in a mediocre performance, there seemingly only to satisfy a non-discerning craving from tired subscribers: forget it.  

 

I listened and – often, just as important – watched ‘blind’, knowing none of the composers’ work beforehand. (If you wish to point out that makes me unqualified, you are probably right, but it is perhaps less surprising than a situation in which I were to write about Brahms without some prior acquaintance.)  Elena Rykova’s 101% mind uploading, for three performers, seemed to me in some ways to hark back to the music-theatre of the 1960s and ’70s. We had three performers whose role was gestural, even dramatic, as much as musical. They arrived – I could not help but think of Henze’s Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer, especially given its jazz group – in surgical garb and proceeded, it seemed, to perform surgery upon the piano. Other instruments were part of the act from time to time, but the piano remained the central focus. All manner of sounds issued forth: almost wasp-like at one point. As a piece of theatre, I found it initially arresting, if perhaps over-long; it struck me that it might well have lasted for three hours, or for that matter three minutes. I am not sure how long it lasted, but to speak of ‘musical material’ and what length it might have justified would seem rather to be missing the point. Here as elsewhere, though, there was no gainsaying the ability of the performers, members of the excellent, undoubtedly radical Black Page Orchestra.

 

Stefan Prins’s Piano Hero #1, for midi-keyboard, live electronics, and video followed. I shall doubtless show myself woefully out of touch here, but it seemed to me to show an interesting musico-dramatic grasp and communication of the ‘gamer’ at his console. It was certainly a performance in a very strong sense, the video screen notwithstanding. Electronic look and sounds combined convincingly and not always expectedly.

 

The final two works had a little more of the jazz arena to them. (I am certainly not complaining that the first two did not, simply noting the ‘fit’ or otherwise with surroundings and expectations.) In the case of Mirela Ivičevič’s The F SonG (dominosa VII), the presence of a saxophone helped, but more fundamentally, the sense of an amplified celebration as well, perhaps, as deconstruction, of a jam session. Ensemble and electronics were intertwined in both composition and performance to an extent that, certainly on a first hearing, it was difficult – and probably fruitless – to try to distinguish between them.

 

Oliver Weber’s Heat Wave, for bass clarinet, electronic guitar, piano, violin, and electronics, seemed at times especially preoccupied with certain repeated notes, often on the same instrument, sometimes not. There were some Kraftwerk-ish electronic sounds, I thought, and my friend noticed a quotation from Summertime. (That might make sense, given the work title; I am afraid I missed it.) So much to think about, and much remaining to make sense of: I hope I shall be able to return before long to the festival. And, by the way, how lovely to go to a concert and receive excellent table drinks service!

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.

Wien Modern (4): Currie/VSO/Nielsen – Gruber and Staud, 15 November 2015

Konzerthaus, Vienna

HK Gruber – into the open… (Austrian premiere)

Johannes Maria Staud – Zimt: Ein Diptychon für Bruno Schulz (Austrian premiere)

Colin Currie (percussion)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Erik Nielsen (conductor)

 

Two works by Austrian composers received their Austrian premieres in excellent performances from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Erik Nielsen. HK Gruber’s into the open…, for percussion and orchestra was written as a tribute to David Drew. (Drew died during its composition.) The opening section is still, full of suspense. I read later Gruber’s description of it as a ‘slow, meditative processional, as if the soloist is walking through a “pitch landscape”,’ which seems to me a description as beautiful as it is accurate. Colin Currie, as ever a supremely musical and assured artist, had mostly tuned percussion to deal with as he walked through that landscape. I thought at the time of it as an orchestral backdrop, with strong echoes of Berg. The feeling of suspense was powerfully maintained, as much a tribute to Nielsen’s conducting as to Gruber’s writing. Eventually, full brass chords, which might have come from Weill, announced a new section. ‘Partway into the single movement span,’ I subsequently read, ‘I heard of the death of David Drew and this influenced the course of the rest of the piece, but the first section now seems to be a premonition of what the work would become.’ Balletic, Prokofiev-like music was next, or soon, up, Currie weaving his percussionist’s web around it. Gruber quite right to point to his twin qualities as ‘precision time-piece’ and, in slower, lyrical music, being ‘more like a violinist, cellist, or even a singer, drawing out sustained melody from the percussion instruments’. Old dances sounded, but never quite as pastiche; there was no doubting the Viennese quality of the music, even if it were Vienna ‘of a certain age’ rather than ‘Wien Modern’. A Stravinsky-like passage caught the ear. The music was easy to listen to, but interesting to listen to as well.

In the second half, we heard Johannes Maria Staud’s Zimt: Ein Diptychon für Bruno Schulz. I was a little unsure why an orchestral diptych for a Polish-Jewish poet should be called Cinnamon, but after reading on the train home, learned that it must have been a reference to Schulz’s reminiscences of childhood, Die Zimtläden, published in 1934. Reading that and other works by Schulz clearly made a great impression upon Staud; he writes of him as ‘like a meteorite’ and a ‘visionary’. In performance, opening percussion, of which there is much in Staud’s piece (five instrumentalists, I think, including a timpanist), formed something of a connection with the first half. An orchestral passage put me in mind of the drowning music from Wozzeck, the harmony quite similar, the orchestration less so, but undoubtedly virtuosic. Syncopations seemed in relatively conventional fashion to denote, or at least to suggest, unease. Riotous music evoked, for me at least, the world of Boulez’s orchestral Notations. The music disappeared – upwards. Presumably far from coincidentally, the second movement opened with an unmistakeable series of tonal descents. Again, there was no doubting the virtuosity of Staud’s handling of the orchestra, nor the virtuosity of the performances from all concerned. Downward glissandi continued to be prominent, counterbalanced by their inversions. Some of the material sounded similar to that of the first movement, but transformed by its context. Again, there was a good deal of riotous Notations-like writing; but this was a riot constantly changing in nature, the writing and performance as detailed as they were exuberant.

Wien Modern (3) - Arditti Quartet: Zorn, Lim, Tonia, Parades, and Kessler

Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus

John Zorn – The Remedy of Fortune (2014, Austrian premiere)

Liza Lim – The Weaver’s Knot (2013, Austrian premiere)
Lina Tonia – Ennea (2015, world premiere)
Hilda Paredes – Hacia una bitácora capilar (2014, Austrian premiere)
Thomas Kessler – String Quartet, for string quartet with live electronics (2012, Austrian premiere)

Irvine Arditti and Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)

Ralf Ehlers (viola)

Lucas Fels (cello)

 

By default rather than design – although I think it is worth doing more often – I heard all five of these pieces without programme notes, since I had left the Wien Modern programme at my apartment. My experience was often unmediated by anything whatsoever, since I had only heard music by one of the composers, Hilda Paredes, previously, and even then, not this particular piece. Too much can sometimes be made of the virtues of listening with an ‘innocent ear’. An important part of artistic creation and reception is what we bring culturally to the table; we do not need always to reinvent the wheel, or sonata form, or whatever it might be. However, there are real virtues too; I hope that my reactions would not have been different, had I known more about the works and the composers – the performances, needless to say, all seemed excellent – but how can I know?

 

First up was John Zorn’s The Remedy of Fortune. I learned afterwards that it was ‘inspired by Guillaume de Machaut and Béla Bartók’s work’. The title, it seems, is after a poem by Machaut; the work, Zorn’s sixth quartet, unfolds in six tableaux, each of them beginning, in a tribute to Bartók’s Sixth Quartet, mesto. That must, the first time around, have been what I heard as an introduction of sorts: so far, so good. Moreover, the work seemed to unfold in sections as outlined, although I naturally had no idea of the reasoning, nor of the emphasis upon different aspects of ‘romantic love’: hope, pain, ecstasy, and so on. A tonal violin fragment was repeated several times, prior to some quite different material, setting up what seemed like an unpredictable pattern for the rest of the work. Sounds from the past came and went. One pizzicato passage sounded almost balletic, a first violin passage following with shades of Prokofiev, although the music against which it was set certainly had no such shades! At what seemed like the heart was another pizzicato section, certainly seeming to evoke, to imitate, perhaps even to incorporate early music. Involved counterpoint would be followed by simple, diatonic harmony, with much in between too. I am not sure what it all added up to, but, by the same token, could certainly not, on the basis of a single hearing, say that it did not add up.

 

Liza Lim followed, with The Weaver’s Knot, written for the fortieth anniversary of the Arditti Quartet. Her piece was – a welcome thing, this! – shorter than its predecessor. ‘Traditional’ extended techniques, harmonics included (if one can call them extended techniques!), sounded, especially at its opening, surprisingly fresh, even new. There seemed to me far more of a continuous line than in the Zorn piece, however quickly that line might change its quality. Pitches emerged as centres, if only then to be replaced by others. A process of unfolding, not necessarily as one might expect it, seemed to be at the heart; perhaps that was the concept of the ‘knot’ and its untying?

 

Lina Tonia’s Ennea, still shorter, or so it seemed (I am never any good at knowing how long music lasts in seconds, minutes, hours…), emerged as an accomplished work indeed, again from someone with whose music I was entirely unfamiliar. The ‘spiral form’ – as I learned later – had in common with Lim’s work a strong sense of what one might reasonably think of as development and of unexpected, yet far from arbitrary, twists to that development. An arresting opening with high (post-Ligeti?) scurrying immediately instilled the sense of not knowing where the music might lead. Lucas Fels’s cello continued to offer something different: both from the violins and viola, and from its earlier, reinventing self. A long, quite viola note (Ralf Ehlers), perhaps with a reminiscence, at least for me, of Nono, led to reinvigorated, even violent scurrying. I should certainly like to hear more from Tonia.

 

Finally, in the first half: Paredes’s Hacia una bitácora capilar, a shorter version, as again I would learn afterwards, of another 40^th anniversary Arditti work, Bitácora capilar. The players’ performance certainly seemed to speak of knowing the material inside out: performed as a ‘classic’, as other quartets might perform Brahms. There seemed, to my ears, to be a strong sense of harmony and harmonic progression, although the harmonies themselves were rarely over-familiar, or expected. Likewise, the sense of musical narrative, not necessarily to be translated into words or images, though not necessarily not so to be translated, sounded strongly throughout, both in work and performance. Textures were varied, yet always sounded as if they took their leave from a greater whole.

After the interval, came the one work with electronics: Thomas Kessler’s 2013 String Quartet. I have still not consulted the programme note, but shall do so after writing. Ghostly – in the sense of the past and of something akin to the spirit world – opening electronics sounded initially an intriguing idea that a more tonal realm might be that of modern Klangregie, whilst the venerable string quartet sounded more of the present. And yet, that relationship did not remain constant, apparently subjected to all manner of twists and turns: the well-worn metaphor of a journey sprang again to mind. Intervals sounded with stronger tonal implications than I might have suspected they intrinsically had; I was not sure how or why that was accomplished, yet again, it intrigued. Electronic manipulation of ‘old’ harmonies and incessant instrumental ‘interference’ put me in mind of an old radio broadcast. And then, quickly, there was something else entirely; or was it? At any rate, there seemed to be no resting upon laurels, upon easy assumptions. Materials seemed re-examined, re-imagined, almost like Lachenmann, but in a less overtly didactic fashion; indeed, I sensed no didacticism at all. Perhaps there was an irony in that the traditional pattern of what sounded as the ‘weightiest’ – that is not necessarily to say the ‘best’, though equally, it is not to say that it was not, either – work was placed as the culmination of the concert. Much, then, to think about, in another splendidly impressive Arditti Quartet performance. And yes, I should be eager to hear more of Kessler’s music.

 

Wien Modern (2): Ahonen/Klangforum Wien/Ceccherini - Sciarrino, 6 November 2015

Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus

Sciarrino – Carnaval (2010-11, Austrian premiere)

Joonas Ahonen (piano)

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

Tito Ceccherini (conductor)

 

The Austrian premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Carnaval was placed in trustworthy hands. One expects excellence from Klangforum Wien and the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, but one should never take excellence for granted. Joined by Joonas Ahonen as pianist (he is in fact a member of Klangforum Wien, but here had soloistic billing) and Tito Ceccherini as conductor, the two ensembles not only displayed musical excellence; they seemed also to express musical delight, a key concept in both the written texts and their musical setting, just as in so many madrigals of old, long an inspiration to Sciarrino. Five voices, piano solo, ten other instrumentalists (two flutes, two clarinets, two trombones, two cellos, three percussionists), and conductor united in a fashion not entirely different from that suggested by Monteverdi’s example.

 

In twelve movements, all but one of them with voices, Carnaval treads a madrigalian line, familiar yet reimagined, between what we might consider, however insufficient the terms, the popular and the aristocratic. But that is not perhaps the most important of its explorations. The written texts, all in Italian, mostly originate in ancient Chinese verse, an Odyssey-like (Sciarrino’s own comparison) homage to the art of Towitara Buoyoyu as well as the more obvious – to most in the West – character-piece homage to Schumann, the ‘fantastic’, and perhaps a tension between larger-scale form and the fragmentary. Masks, disguises, the play of appearance and whatever might lie behind it: such seem to be part of the material, both musical, verbal, and, I think we might say, even with cautionary quotation marks, ‘dramatic’ too. Monteverdi’s dramatic madrigals call into question rigid distinctions between concert and drama; so have many works since, not least some of Schumann’s, and certainly many of Sciarrino’s.
 

 

Voices such as Zhuang Zhou, from the fourth century before Christ, take us up to the final recitative text, elaborated by Sciarrino from a biography of Tao Yuanming. They all treat in some way with the idea and indeed the practical reality of music, and, in more general terms, that of artistic creation and performance too. Love for music and for its performance are not the least of their qualities: kissing the sound of a note sung, for instance (no.10, ‘Lasciar vibrare’: ‘Suono pieno/stordisce/tenue silenzio/trasporta I canti/tu lascia che il suono/baci la sua vibrazione/lascia’). Sometimes, the music offers a strong pictorial element, for instance the traditional word-painting, both instrumental and vocal, upon ‘tremante’ in no.7. In other cases, the relationship is more oblique or more complicated. Infectious joy in music-making is never far away, though, whether in the carolling – or so it seemed to me – of no.4, or the febrile, almost Boulezian – a comparison rather than thesis of ‘influence’ – proliferation of instrumental material in no.11. The social element of a musician’s endeavour – ‘inventing images’ for his friends – has all manner of historical and indeed geographical precedent: the Schubertiade or the heyday of the madrigal itself, as well as more folk-like instances. Here, it seems honestly, playfully reinvented.
 

One might consider the purely instrumental eleventh movement, ‘Stanze della pioggia (dedicato a Maurizio Pollini)’ a concertante piece for piano and ensemble, yet it came across here, most creditably, as perhaps closer still to chamber music. Virtuosity was shared across the ensemble; different soloists emerged as momentarily pre-eminent, but not for the sake of pre-eminence. It stands as longer than any of the other movements, longer than many of them put together. Repeated figures and their variants are passed through the ensemble, but certain instruments, not least one of the cellos, seem to retain a degree of ownership. Perhaps such figures and variants create their own narrative, even their own linguistic world. Do we need words after all? And yet, we return to words for the twelfth movement, that evocation of Tao Yuanming mentioned above. He could make no music, but he had a lute without strings, ‘un liuto senza corde’. Wine plays its part in the verbal resolution, as the piano does in its musical playing out. Such collegiality and conviviality seem not the least of the delights one might take home, at least in memory, from such a musical feast. A renaissance of the Renaissance, perhaps: or, so we fancy.
 

Wien Modern (1): Montalvo/ORF SO/Meister - Boulez, 5 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus

Boulez – Pli selon pli

Marisol Montalvo (soprano)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Cornelius Meister (conductor)

 

The twenty-eighth season of Wien Modern, my first (at least in person), opened, as seems proper, with a contribution to the ninetieth anniversary celebrations for Pierre Boulez. It was with a disc from the Vienna Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado, who founded the festival in 1988, that, as a student, I was first made aware of Wien Modern. That recording offered works by Rihm, Ligeti, Nono, and Boulez, so it seemed especially fitting that my first visit should begin with a work by the composer the festival aptly describes as ‘the Grand Master of new music’. Pli selon pli, as sure a candidate for Boulezian masterpiece as any, also readily permits consideration of this season’s guiding theme. To quote its website, ‘One of the characteristics of contemporary music is the multiplicity of forms and genres and the means and forms of expression. Starting from the premise that all music is characterised by the cultural, historical and social parameters of the time in which it was written, WIEN MODERN will this season set out to explore the artistic intentions that shape the dominant fields of expression and composition today. As the motto Pop.Song.Voice suggests, the voice as instrument will act as mediator between the “masterpieces” of new music and advanced pop music.’

And, to that end, we listened first to an opening speech from Susanne Kirchmayr, which made a welcome change from the typical introductory address by a politician or bureaucrat. (I remember, as a child, enduring an introduction to a youth orchestra concert in which a local councillor regaled us for what seemed like hours on his alleged ‘discovery’ that the word ‘euphonious’, clearly a new word to him, was derived from the word, ‘euphonium’, thereby demonstrating the primacy of brass band music. Especially charming for those of us in other sections of the orchestra, this interminable address ended with the declaration that it did not matter whether what we did were any good, since we should all end up doing ‘proper jobs’ anyway, although music might remain a ‘nice hobby’.) Kirchmayr, who performs as a DJ under the name Electric Indigo, spoke interestingly about what New Music – I remain old-fashioned enough to use capitals from time to time – of all sorts might have in common, not least in its resistance to neo-liberal demands of the market. Stockhausen, Jimi Hendrix, Adorno, and others put in appearances, not for their own sake, but as part of an argument that would surely have had much to say to those who had not really considered such matters, as well as questioning those who had. A new Electric Indigo work will be performed on 26 November, during a concert entitled ‘No.1: A Phenomenology of Pop’.

Marisol Montalvo, the ORF Symphony Orchestra and Cornelius Meister then took the stage for Boulez’s Mallarmé ‘portrait’. A celebrated trick of eighteenth-century French orchestras was le premier coup d’archet; Mozart used the device in his ‘Paris’ Symphony. Boulez’s opening orchestral coup is just as impressive – and so it was in performance, followed by necessary, yet perhaps just as shocking, sultriness from voice and orchestra. Meister imparted a strong expository sense to this first movement, ‘Don’, allowing the material and its deployment in their turn to impart a strong sense of musical creation, not unlike, say depictions by Haydn or Berg. In this movement, stately orchestral progress worked very well, offering plenty of space for glances aside from the main procession. (I often thought in that connection of the later Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna.) The performance from Montalvo, especially once she reached the section, ‘…basalte… …y… …échos… [etc.]’, had something of an intervention to it, if not from another culture, then of a different way of considering that dramatised, if that be the right word, here. She seemed engaged in a dramatic delivery of (self-)discovery against Messieanic harmonies which, for once, moved slowly yet surely. Less hieratic, wilder, even frenzied at times: hers was a performance seemingly in conflict, even fruitifully so, with the more careful – perhaps on occasion in subsequent movements, too careful – path mapped out by the orchestra. Instrumental development again brought Messiaen, not always the most ‘developmental’ of composers, to mind, leavened by the Second Viennese School; or perhaps that should have been the other way around. Musical fertility abounded – and resounded.

‘Improvisation I’ offered what one might think of as a more conventionally ‘vocal’ performance, bearing in mind the mediating role of the voice proposed by the festival as a whole. It was recognisably the same ‘voice’, the same portrayal, whether in work or vocal performance, yet seemed also to hark back to earlier vocal and choral works, such as Le Visage nuptial and Le Soleil des eaux. And then, a different, Berg-like voice spoke from the orchestra, sounding or, perhaps better, suggesting catastrophe. Words and language clearly related to music and sound, yet, as in, say, Tristan und Isolde, the relationship, whatever the historical priority, appeared to manifest itself in both directions.

The opening éclat – so often an apt word for Boulez’s music – of ‘Improvisation II’ made its point; so did Montalvo’s vocal melismata, again offering points of departure for consideration of the voice and its mediating, or perhaps leading, role. The apparent naïveté of Montalvo’s performance at this point intrigued, especially when set against a more motoric instrumental performance. The idea of magic has perhaps been trivialized beyond repair in a disenchanted world; yet perhaps, ‘magical’ was not a silly description in this case. The allure of the impenetrable, in more than one sense, was rendered in ecstatic tones, both vocal and instrumental. Montalvo’s bright, bell-like delivery, stronger at the top of her range, was very different from Barbara Hannigan’s in her unforgettable 2011 performance with Boulez. If less overtly sensual a performance all around, this Wien Modern account had its own strengths, its own possibilities.

I loved the way, in ‘Improvisation III’, in which Montalvo’s voice melded with that of the flute. A new instrument, or a duet? Why need it be either/or? At times, and this was, I think, one of the greatest strengths of Montalvo’s performance, it was as if she were singing one of Messiaen’s (actual or camouflaged) alleluias. Tuned percussion responded in kind, yet interestingly, sounded, whether by design or by wordless default, more secular in concern: not the least intriguing of the dialectics set up here in performance. The near-identity between voice, flute, and sometimes other instruments continued to ravish and to perplex when we returned to the opening ‘A la nue accablante…’.

Finally, ‘Tombeau’. Boulez’s opening, seemingly doom-laden Klangfarbenmelodie sounded – a touch of Austrian orchestral colour, or something more? – as if spun from the same cloth as Webern’s op.6. There was a similar sense, moreover, of muffled procession as heard in the funeral march from Webern’s work. Grief was perhaps more abstract, although that is not to say less powerful. Mahler seemed present – and yet, composition of course preceded Boulez’s immersion in that composer’s work. Perhaps it Pli selon pli would actually inform his conducting of Mahler; ‘influence’, at least interesting influence, never runs in a single direction. At any rate, it did not seem a great step either to or from the world of Wozzeck. Vocal qualities of instruments were again readily apparent. A French horn might have been a soprano. And when the horn cried against the long-delayed soprano entry, echoes, musical and historical alike, resounded from the Nachtmusik of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. The final ‘mort’ and orchestral coup might have been too theatrical for some – I heard a similar criticism made at the recent Barbican performance from Yeree Suh, the BBC SO, and Thierry Fischer – but for me they worked very well indeed. Theatricality is not foreign to Boulez, and we are only just beginning to discover the multiplicity of performing possibilities his music offers. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it is vital that we continue to perform his music and do not restrict it to anniversary outings. Audiences are there; performers are there; there is no excuse.