Argerich/Staatskapelle Berlin/Mehta - Ravel and Stravinsky, 23 February 2020

Philharmonie

Ravel: La Valse

Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Martha Argerich (piano)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Martha Argerich notwithstanding, this was, I am afraid, a disappointing concert: in the vein of Zubin Mehta’s Berlin Philharmonic Bruckner Eighth in the autumn, only more so. Perhaps that was because what can to a certain extent pass muster in Bruckner, at best letting the music flow without interference, leads to scrappiness and other lack of necessary control in Ravel.

At any rate, near collapse at two moments in the first movement of the G major Piano Concerto can hardly be accounted a positive; likewise bizarre orchestral balances, seemingly resulting less from an eccentric hearing of Ravel than from an inability to hear him at all. It was difficult to escape the view that the concerto and especially this movement would have been better off without a conductor. Once the fabled tigress of the keyboard took the lead, there was much to enjoy in terms of pellucidity, drive, and clarity, not least of the rhythmic variety. Her opening solo in the slow movement was everything one could wish for: line, voicing, nobility, a refusal to mistake sentiment for sentimentality. Beating time, Mehta did a reasonable job for the most part, despite a couple of audibly difficult corners to turn. The Staatskapelle Berlin’s woodwind nevertheless sounded gorgeous. Argerich’s pianism proved in equal measure muscular and variegated, spot on throughout the finale. When she was not playing and occasionally even when she was, Mehta’s tendency was to let the orchestra fall behind.

La Valse, preceding the concerto, had perhaps fared better, so long as one were not looking for revelation. Growling double basses – eight of them – at the opening augured well, but soon the performance had fallen strangely rigid. When Mehta intervened a little more, it helped; that is, until he drove the score too hard. Again there were wonderful woodwind solos, often allied to string playing of sheen and depth: recognisably this great orchestra. Overall form, however, remained elusive in a performance that seemed simply to move from phrase to phrase, sometimes even bar to bar. The sign-off was, by any accounts, bizarrely plodding.

To my surprise, The Rite of Spring probably came off best, albeit in strictly relative terms. So long as one were not expecting Pierre Boulez or Esa-Pekka Salonen, there would have been enough to make sense of the piece. Its opening in particular verily teemed with signs of rebirth, capturing fascinating instrumental combinations and balances and relationships between freedom and metrical precision prophetic for later-twentieth-century modernism. For most of the first part, there was nothing eccentric about Mehta’s tempi, nor did he lose momentum. Indeed, tension increased, notwithstanding a few strange decisions concerning balance. Stravinsky’s rite became more involving, seemingly of its own ‘volition’ or at least material: that is surely the trick here, at least to mainstream Rite interpretation. There was something properly horrifying to the apparent automation of the Procession of the Sage, although its immediate aftermath fell oddly flat. The final dance of the first part, however, perked up. Alas, the second part was somehow rather on the dull side. There was nothing really to complain about, save for an overtly sectional approach. It was neither involving nor intriguingly ‘objective’, just ultimately rather nondescript and lacking in cumulative power. I have never felt less thrilled at the close.

BPO/Mehta - Bruckner, 6 November 2019

Philharmonie

Bruckner: Symphony no.8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Leopold Nowak)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Having recently retired from a forty-two-year (!) music directorship of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta returned to another orchestra with which he has a longstanding relationship, the Berlin Philharmonic, to conduct Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. Mehta had also conducted, in 2012, the BPO’s most recent performances of this particular version (Nowak). I wonder whether his grip on those performances might have been less faltering, for while there was a good deal to admire in an approach that did not have the conductor imprint his ego on Bruckner’s score, especially earlier on, the final two movements in particular lacked direction and coherence, leaving one simply to marvel at the excellence of the BPO’s playing. It was difficult to resist the conclusion that, whilst orchestral response had been electric throughout, Mehta had tired during the symphony’s admittedly arduous course.

The first movement opened with great promise indeed, string tone – and indeed, that of other instruments, as they entered – imbued with a high degree of nervous expectancy. Mehta’s straightforward, unfussy direction, seemingly ‘just’ letting the orchestra play, had much to be said for it, even if there were times when a little more yielding would not have gone amiss. Berlin woodwind offered the potentiality of something more, even modernistic, though this playing remained thoroughly within standard, ‘Romantic’ tradition. Contours and climaxes were well prepared and shaped. There were, moreover, wonderful passages of uneasy stillness, against which Albrecht Mayer’s solo oboe in particular could truly beguile. Brass were implacable, where necessary – far from all the time – but were also far more than that; this was playing of a subtlety of which most orchestras and audiences could only dream. If the movement’s drama did not necessarily seem overt at the time, in retrospect everything had fallen into place. There is much to be said for undemonstrative, unaffected Bruckner such as this.

The scherzo proved commendably light on its feet. Motivic procedures seemed to speak for themselves, not least when it came to Bruckner’s complementary yet generative inversions. Again, the music was never over-conducted – and for the most part benefited from that. There was charm to the trio, not least from the Berlin harps, and a degree of depth too, especially in one passage from consort-like lower strings, Bruckner’s score apparently looking, listening back past Bach to ‘early music’ in quickening rather than archaeological fashion. So much for Bruckner’s Caecilian critics.

If the slow movement had continued as it began, all would have been well. Dignified and, again, commendably straightforward, the first few minutes had many of the virtues to which we had accustomed, not least superlative playing from the Berlin Philharmonic. I had certainly heard performances that had dug deeper, had posed more metaphysical questions, and so forth, but the last thing anyone wants is an unsuccessful attempt at such: better by far to treat the music on terms issuing from the conductor. However, as time went on, I felt an increasing lack of ordering coherence, only exacerbated in the finale.

Its opening had certainly benefited from renewed focus, C minor emphatically reinstated. After a couple of minutes, though, the performance began to drift again, desperately in need of someone to grab it by the scruff of the neck, to point to battles yet to win and, at least by implication, its final destination. One audible, frankly baffling gear change suggested that Mehta might have been roused from relative slumber, but that only contributed to the sense of overall drift. The final blaze of C major was strangely hectic, its problem being an obscurity of roots in what had come previously. A pity, then, although orchestral playing ultimately made this a performance worth having heard.

Berlin Festtage (3) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2017

Dyer's Wife (Iréne Theorin), Empress (Camilla Nylund), Barak (Wolfgang Koch)
Images: Hans Jörg Michel

Schiller Theater

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Camilla Nylund

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Roman Trekel

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Iréne Theorin
Apparition of Youth – Jun-Sang Han
Voice of the Falcon – Narine YeghiyanVoice from Above – Jane Henschel
Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Evelin Novak

Voice from Above – Anja Schlosser

The One-Eyed – Alfredo Daza
The One-Armed – Grigory Shkarupa

The Hunchback – Karl-Michael Ebner

Servants, Children’s Voices – Sónia Grané, Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Children’s Voices – Anna Charim, Verena Allertz, Konstanze Löwe

Voices of Nightwatchmen – David Oštrek, Gyula Orendt, Dominc Barberi

Claus Guth (director)

Julia Burbach (assistant director)

Christian Schmidt (designs)

Olaf Winter (lighting)

Andi A. Müller (video)

Ronny Dietrich (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Children’s Chorus (chorus master; Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopern Chor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Empress and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

Claus Guth’s staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten, already seen in Milan and in London, now reaches Berlin, the Staatsoper the third of its co-producing partners. Here, I think, its psychoanalytical and, more broadly, dramatic focus is sharper, doubtless the consequence of certain reworking in the light of experience, whether by Guth or his assistants. Narrative clarity is anything but reductionist or lacking in conceptual framework, yet the danger of obscuring Hofmannsthal’s tendency towards the obscure is avoided throughout. We open with a sanatorium dumb show, a woman receiving treatment. In her dreaming, she becomes – or perhaps always has been: it does not really matter – the Empress. Dreaming is not, it should be added, a banal matter of waking up and discovering ‘it was all a dream’, almost as a way of rounding off something that could not otherwise have been rounded off; that was rather the impression gained, at least by me, in London. Here, with some sharpening up of the medical apparatus – a little more presence, perhaps, earlier in the third act would not go amiss – it comes across far more clearly as a mode of treatment. What our heroine – hysterical in more than one way, or perhaps not – undergoes is perhaps what she needs; at any rate, it is what she gets.

 

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz)

Navigation of the boundaries between reality and dream, accepting that sometimes they will remain unclear and that that is no bad thing, gains dynamic impetus through its interaction with Hofmannsthal’s idea of transformation; Ariadne auf Naxos seems to beckon, or perhaps it already has beckoned. The mythological world it continues to receive a relatively full due, echoes, however strained of The Magic Flute, heard (more to the point, seen), without overwhelming. Schmidt’s designs and Olaf Winter’s lighting come into their own here, although I could do without the strangely banal video explication. The shadows cast across the stage say far more than a projection of a pregnant stomach being rubbed. What last time I called ‘the sheer weirdness but also menacing sense of judgement emanating from a courtroom of strange creatures’, close to the end, seems perhaps more menacing in its imagined flights of fantasy than ever. Dreams and their interpretation remain indivisible. ‘Treatment’ is, moreover, not without its perils. Coming hard on the heels of the Freudian themes in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Parsifal, the staging offers much to ponder.

 

Zubin Mehta’s conducting of the score was less probing. He knew ‘how it went’, although perhaps lingered a little too much at times when the singers – and the drama – might have preferred otherwise. Compared, however, with Semyon Bychkov’s truly outstanding account at Covent Garden, as fine as anything I know on record, let alone have known in the theatre, Mehta’s reading sounded generalised. Where Strauss’s score offers a myriad of opportunities for harmonic and, still more, colouristic fragmentation and reunion, ever transforming before our ears, this was often a little dogged and, if not monochrome, less kaleidoscopic and, more generally, multivalent, than one might have hoped for. The Staatkapelle Berlin nevertheless sounded excellent, solos well taken without exception, although there were times when I wished Mehta might have allowed it more of its head – and sheer heft. I could not help but recall Daniele Gatti’s shattering 2010 Elektra in Salzburg, as well as Bychkov’s FroSch, and finding something missing.

The Nurse

The cast, though, was first-rate, just as had been the case in London. I am not sure I have heard Burkhard Fritz on better form. The physical demands of the Emperor’s part are fearsome, cruel even by Strauss’s usual tenor standards. One can readily forgive a single wayward passage for the otherwise splendid performance heard here. Camilla Nylund’s Empress could hardly have been bettered. As well acted as it was well sung, as variegated in colour and dynamic contrast as it was clean of line, this was above all a performance that had one sympathise, believe in the ‘case’ before us. I likewise do not think I have heard a better Barak than that of Wolfgang Koch. His way with words and music certainly had me sympathise with the character like never before. The dyer’s predicament was ‘real’, not merely symbolic or dreamed. Iréne Theorin’s imperious yet also deeply felt Dyer’s Wife impressed similarly, its vocal roots in the figure of Isolde but also, one felt, once we knew she had not made the diabolical agreement, in the humanity of Mozart. If Roman Trekel’s Spirit-Messenger were somewhat dry of tone, the instrument of his message, Michaela Schuster, fully lived up to the high expectations elicited by her London performance, its ambiguous malevolence heightened by the Freudian setting. With choruses, adult and children’s alike, on splendid form too, blocked as well as they sang, there was much to celebrate here indeed – even if we cannot include that disturbing pro-natalism from which we shall never quite be able to rescue the work.

Staatskapelle Berlin/Mehta - Haydn, The Creation, 14 March 2017

Konzerthaus, Berlin

Die Schöpfung/The Creation, Hob. XXI:2

Julia Kleiter (soprano)

Christian Elsner (tenor)

René Pape (bass)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

It is always a joy to return to Karl Friedrich Schninkel’s Konzerthaus in the Gendarmenmarkt, originally the Prussian Royal Theatre, but latterly, once its post-war restoration was finally completed in 1983, transformed into a concert house. The Staatskapelle Berlin tends, diplomatically, to give its subscription concerts twice: once in West Berlin’s Philharmonie, once in the East’s neo-Classical jewel. Its acoustic is glorious, despite or perhaps even on account of, its interior transformation; there is life in the old-fashioned shoebox auditorium yet, as the Musikverein or Concertgebouw would attest. For a refugee Londoner, to have just one concert hall of such quality is an extraordinary blessing. To have this, the Philharmonie, the new Pierre Boulez Saal…

 

Composed only a couple of decades before the construction of the theatre, Haydn’s Creation or Schöpfung seemed very much ‘at home’ here. Indeed, I could not help but consider the strong connections of its librettist, Gottfried van Swieten, to Berlin a little earlier. Joseph II – by then Holy Roman Emperor and co-Regent with Maria Theresa – had intended him to send him as Imperial Ambassador to Rome, but Swieten’s enthusiasm, noted by the Papal Nuncio to Vienna, for ‘moderno filosofismo’ put an end to that. Instead, Swieten was sent to Frederick the Great’s Berlin, where he encountered Handel’s oratorios and other alte Musik, then perhaps surprisingly well cultivated in Berlin circles (certainly when compared with Vienna). Some of the seeds for his collaboration with Haydn were sown here. (In the present climate, moreover, it was impossible not to think that there could hardly be a more European work by a more European composer and librettist. UKIP and the fanatics running the United Kingdom into the ground would doubtless object to a bilingual text: why cannot everyone speak English? Mostly everyone here can, generally very well indeed; how is your German, Mrs May?)

 

Under Zubin Mehta, the assembled forces gave a broad, central performance of Haydn’s imperishable oratorio, The Creation, neither noticeably ‘period’-influenced – one would hardly expect it to have been – nor especially assertive in its ‘traditionalism’. All such terms are at best problematical to the point of meaninglessness, I know; yet, by the same token, the reader will most likely have a good sense of what is intended. Save for the sparing use of the harpsichord during orchestral passages, then – something about which I cannot bring myself to become too excited either way – I cannot imagine that there would have been anything to scare the horses either way, which is not to say that this was dull, or boring. An equally problematical idea is that of permitting the work to speak for it itself, but that again is pretty much the impression one received. There was plenty of air in the orchestral performance, for instance, during the opening section of Uriel’s first aria, but, by the same token, scope for something darker, when, during that same aria, Hell’s Spirits briefly put in their not-entirely-frightening appearance.

 

Likewise, the real depth to the sound of the Staatskapelle Berlin – always a great strength of this orchestra – in Raphael’s ‘Rollend in schäumenden Wellen’ was not at all at the expense of variegation in sound. Much the same, far from incidentally, might be said about René Pape’s account of the solo line, about which more a little later. Orchestral solos and ensemble writing were, without exception, beautifully, even heart-rendingly, presented: take the clarinet in ‘Nun beut die Flur das frische Grün’, or the ravishing three flutes against pizzicato in Uriel’s Third Part opening number, ‘Aus Rosenwolken bricht’. Eden indeed, then, and the horns proved just as beautiful, as noble of utterance. Even the timpani underlay, subtle yet directed, had me think: ‘Have I actually heard it quite like that before?’ Whether I had or no was hardly the point, for I was made, or gently guided, to listen. Pictorial elements sounded as musical as well as illustrative as I can recall. Maybe even Berlioz would have recanted from his view that this was a work that made him want to murder somebody. A particular highlight of the orchestral playing for me was the sound of violas and cellos in Raphael’s accompagnato, ‘Und Gott schuf große Walfische’: the archaism conjuring up a reimagined viol consort, the modernity equally striking.

 

Tempi were generally much as one, or I, might have expected, sometimes a little slower – for instance, in a dignified reading of ‘Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk’ – and sometimes a little faster – for instance, in a very swift reading of the final chorus – but never unreasonably so, and never with the impression that something was being done to the work. There was a Handelian sturdiness to choruses such as ‘Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes’, which enabled quietly spoken majesty to emerge. Perhaps there might on occasion have been a little more sense of theatre, but subtlety and a lack of grandstanding reap their own rewards. Certainly the choral singing was beyond reproach throughout. The clarity of, for example, ‘Stimmt an die Saiten’ such that Haydn’s imitative writing registered as strongly as I can recall, without prejudice to a necessary, or at least desirable, impression of heft too.

 

If Julia Kleiter might have seemed, on paper, somewhat lighter of voice than the rest of the assembled company, such a contrast did not manifest itself in reality. Indeed, if anything, it was the relative lightness of Pape’s voice that surprised: not exactly toned down, but with a keen sense of style, and splendid attention to the words. Their duetting as Adam and Eve proved a joy, rightly breathing the air of the opera house as much as the concert hall, the Konzerthaus’s staged past perhaps coming a little more to the fore of its historical palimpsest. Pape proved suavely seductive – the rolling of his ‘r’ in ‘Der Früchte Saft alone… – and Kleiter sweetly knowing in response (‘Der Blumen Duft’). Her phrasing and overall shaping of lines throughout was both stylistically irreproachable and happily dynamic in dramatic expression. Christian Elsner showed that a Heldentenor – he is, I read, a noted Parsifal, although I think I am yet to hear him in the theatre – need not shy away from Haydn, far from it. Indeed, there was something almost of Siegfried Jerusalem (think of his Seasons with Marriner, or indeed his Magic Flute with Haitink) to the fine balance struck between style, heft, and winning sweetness of tone. If I did not emerge from the performance with any of my ideas concerning the work notably upset or transformed, there is a good deal to be said, especially in such troubled times, for something that reminds us of the civilization, the Europe, the Haydn for which we should all be fighting.

Salzburg Festival (5) - Goerne/VPO/Mehta - Pärt, Mahler, and Bruckner, 7 August 2016

Grosses Festspielhaus

Arvo Pärt – Swansong

Mahler – Kindertotenlieder
Bruckner – Symphony no.4 in E-flat major (1878-80 version)

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

The Vienna Philharmonic’s Salzburg concerts are generally – rightly – considered highlights of the Festival. This particular concert, however, proved somewhat disappointing. With the outer works, the problems lay, at least for me, as much with the works themselves as with the performances, whereas with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, the performance was strangely subdued, although far from without merit.

 

Arvo Pärt’s 2013 Swansong left me wondering what on earth Zubin Mehta and the VPO were doing performing such trite music. It sounded like odds and ends that had been rejected from incidental music for the pilot episode of a mid-1990s Channel 4 television drama. With added bells, of course. Perhaps ‘Sibelius without the jokes’ might be another way of thinking about it. The ending came from the realm of atrocious film scores. It was relatively brief, but not brief enough.

 

Matthias Goerne joined the assembled throng for the Mahler cycle. ‘Nun will die Sonn’s o hell aufgeh’n’ immediately offered a duly mournful contrast. It was an intimate performance, but was it perhaps too intimate? Mehta’s habit of keeping down the strings to a level of near-inaudibility, both here and elsewhere, first intrigued – the music at first sounded oddly Weill-like – but then baffled and, finally, merely irritated. I loved the pinpoint precision, however, of the VPO’s resident triangle virtuoso. And Mehta’s flexibility in tempo was welcome, never arbitrary. The beauty of sadness and the sadness of beauty registered somewhat in ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen,’ but again I wished they had registered more strongly. There is something to be said for a veering away from Expressionist tendencies here, although I was a little surprised that Goerne should be doing so; alas, I was not entirely clear what we heard in its place. ‘Wenn dein Mütterlein’ benefited from an exquisite English horn solo. In the ensuing ‘Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen’, Mehta’s balance between ongoing lilt and its interruptions was splendid; orchestral balances, however, remained odd. Finally came ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus’: there were intriguing presentiments of Webern to be heard, malevolence all round. This, I thought, was the strongest song as performed, exhibiting real anger without ranting (whether vocal or orchestral). At least it was, until the strings fell apart: disappointing from any orchestra, but particularly from the VPO.

 

Perhaps more rehearsal time had been devoted to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. At any rate, the orchestra seemed to relish this music far more than it had Mahler. As previously mentioned, my problems here lay with the work itself, which still seemed to me to descend in typically lumbering early-ish Bruckner fashion into lengthy incoherence. There was, though, much to admire, even to enjoy, in the first movement, not least the unutterably tender opening horn solo set against shimmering Vienna strings. When flutes and oboes joined, one could almost see a Teutonic forest in one’s mind’s imagination. (Mehta, I should add, was conducting the symphony from memory.) Then, of course, the music went its own, different, all-too-typically unison way. The development offered some wonderfully hushed playing early on: true mystery. Mehta, moreover, did as good a job as any conductor I have heard in having us believe in some logic guiding Bruckner’s path. He summoned up imposing grandeur, the most golden of orchestral tones too. I was also struck by how different the second group sounded during the recapitulation. Horns sounded truly tremendous at the close.

 

There was a winningly post-Schubertian sense of onward tread to the slow movement. I especially loved the fine viola playing (arco) against other pizzicato strings, balance spot on throughout. Some of the more bucolic writing even hinted at a naïve Mahler, if you can imagine such a thing. Must the movement really be quite so lengthy and repetitive, though? In early Bruckner, the scherzos almost always strike me as the most convincing movements – and so again it was here. This had depth whilst remaining relatively light of foot. Mendelssohn it was not, but how could it be? And even when Mehta slowed the tempo considerably, a strong sense of line persisted: rhythm was key here. The dullness of the trio material was not helped by additional dragging. After such listlessness, the return of the scherzo was perhaps even more of a relief than it should have been.

 

And then, there came the seemingly interminable finale. It was performed with great conviction, which yet failed to convince me. Does the music hang together at all? It seems simply, or not so simply, to be a series of blind alleys, blind not out of playfulness, still less of irony, but out of structural incompetence. Perhaps I am missing something. I keep trying; I really do. It was not, however, to be revealed to me on this occasion. There were some truly wonderful orchestral moments, but I could not tell you what they had to do with anything else. The closing bars, however, had beauty and dignity; the players seemed to love and to understand this music, even if I did not.

 

Wishing Waltraud Meier a Very Happy 60th Birthday!

I heard the first of her two farewell performances to this, perhaps her most celebrated role, in Munich last July, in the very same Peter Konwitschny production (which, apparently, she did  not like very much, not that one could tell!) I reproduce my review below, (with apologies for formatting lapses, which I seem unable to disentangle):


What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That may seem a silly question. Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem – though do they only seem? – to recognise, of that celebrated ‘und’. Yes, Tristan is just a shortened title, so we should not necessarily read anything into the disappearance of Isolde, but, whilst we clearly value both lovers and both singers portraying those lovers more or less equally – great Tristans perhaps more so, given their ridiculous rarity – it struck me as perhaps particularly perverse to have been referring to my seeing Tristan at the Munich Opera Festival, when, like so many in the theatre, I had been going especially to hear and, yes, to see Waltraud Meier. For these two performances in Munich, of which the one I heard was the first, have been announced as her farewell to the role. ‘Waltrauds Abschied’, then, I sentimentally called my visit, in dubious Mahlerian homage to a last performance that was actually to be a penultimate performance. I could, after all, hardly say I was off to hear Isolde – or maybe I could, even should, have done.

Of course, when I asked, ‘what do we call Tristan und Isolde’, I was not necessarily just referring to the title. There is no need to frown upon those calling it an opera; I am sure we have all done so at some point, or ought to have done so. But, as with all of Wagner’s dramas, it distances itself from the norms of opera and, perhaps still more so, the opera house. I am perhaps over fond of deploying this quotation from Boulez, but it so often seems to hit the nail upon the head. Whilst at work on the Ring at Bayreuth, Wagner’s great conductor-composer successor observed: ‘Opera houses are often rather like cafés where, if you sit near enough to the counter, you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!’ What was needed, Boulez noted approvingly, ‘was an entirely new musical and theatrical structure, and it was this that he [Wagner] gradually created’. It might then, not be entirely wrong to suggest that Wagner’s works deserve shielding form the opera house, at least as it currently exists. (Let us leave Bayreuth and its never-ending travails to one side for the moment.) However, by the same token, Wagner’s Handlung –his own term, ‘action’, a Teuton’s rendering of ‘drama’, admirably supersedes debates concerning nomenclature – is surely at home in Munich, if anywhere at all. For ‘Waltrauds Abschied’, then, and what I calculated must be at least my twentieth ‘live’ Tristan – sorry, I cannot yet bring myself to call it Isolde – there was something fitting to experiencing it for the first time in the house in which it had received its premiere, 150 years previously (10 June 1865).

Moving on a little from what we call Tristan und Isolde, what do we think it is ‘about’? Wagner was pretty clear, and I have tended to take him at his word, or at least some of his words. In 1859, summarising the work’s concerns for Mathilde Wesendonck, he omitted not only King Marke’s forgiveness, but also Tristan’s agonies at Kareol. True action, Handlung, had been irreversibly transferred to the noumenal world: ‘redemption: death, dying, destruction, never more to waken!’ But as Peter Konwitschny, in a brilliant programme note, argues, quoting Heiner Müller, himself director of a renowned Tristan, ‘Ein Werk ist immer klüger als sein Autor.’ (‘A work is always cleverer than its author.’) Such, one might have thought, was a truism, and for many of us it is, although not for those strange people who seem to think it not only no cleverer but actually more limited, referring to the tedious mantra of a ‘composer’s intentions’ , whilst actually having no more interest in them than their most wild-eyed caricature of so-called Regietheater would. For them, the questionable taste of a questionable memory of their first exposure to a work seems to suffice. Handlung? Madame Tussauds, more like. (‘Museum’ would be too generous, given its connotations of learning, culture, and stewardship.)

Back, however, to Konwitschny. He makes the somewhat startling claim – at least to me – that Tristan is ‘ein sehr hoffnungsvolles Stück’ (‘a very hopeful piece’). As ever, it depends what one means – and it depends what one means by love, death, and so many other things. But Konwitschny, arguably taking his cue from the score, from Isoldes Verklärung, declines to see desolation, although, certainly not taking his cue from Wagner, he seems to tend more to Liszt’s conception of a Liebestod. And so, following our heroic couple’s shuffling off their mortal coils, sombrely dressed in black at the foot of the stage, below the other Handlung – if indeed that qualifies as such – we return to the raised level of that other Handlung, and see Marke and Brangäne visiting their graves. Love, ‘whatever that means’ – and we may understand that as part of Wagner’s ongoing internal battle between Feuerbach and Schopenhauer – may partly have won out, which sounds pat, but does not feel so. Perhaps we have experienced Wagner’s Gefühlswerdung des Verstandes (‘emotionalisation of the intellect’). More optimistically still – and it is surely a useful corrective at least to consider the non-pessimistic aspects or possibilities of the work – we might consider the words of Wagner’s fellow radical 48er, Arnold Ruge, writing of an envisaged religion of freedom, ‘the entire world of humanistic ideals, the entire Spirit of our times, must enter the crucible of feeling, out of which it must again come forth as a glowing stream and build a new world.’

Perhaps the most striking thing about Konwitschny’s production, first seen in 1998, is how it creeps up upon one; indeed, how its owl of Minerva truly only seems to take flight at dusk. The first act takes place, relatively conventionally, on a ship, doing pretty much what Wagner asks, and doing it rather well, although the colourful curtain, presaging aspects of the second act, has perhaps called into question our preconceptions before we are aware of their status as preconceptions . The realms of light and day, phenomenon and noumenon, make their presence felt after the taking of the potion through Michael Bauer’s excellent lighting: a distinction that continues, greatly to the enhancement of the drama. One certainly feels the tragedy in Tristan’s death upon Melot’s sword, but equally, one feels, knows that that is not the only story. The world of Tristan’s past, played to him on old video reels, complements what he tells us, without – this is crucial – overpowering it, as too many overtly psychological, even psychoanalytical readings do. Tristan is not ultimately about the hero’s childhood; it remains concerned with metaphysics, in one way or another. And the release provided by Isolde’s last song is married, not in an easy way but certainly in a fruitful way, to those final scenic aspects mentioned.

We came, of course, at least most of us did, above all for Meier. It is a tribute to the performance and production alike that she did not overshadow but indeed flourished. It would be unduly perverse, though, to overlook her contribution. Over the years in which she has sung Isolde, she has offered many, developing virtues, whether related to production, musical performance, or even the stage of her career. Here, everything seemed in more or less perfect balance – or, better, fruitful dialectic. Attention to words was second to none, likewise stage presence. Sustaining of a vocal line, however, was equally impressive. Suffice it to say, she did not play Isolde; she was Isolde.

Robert Dean Smith also gave the finest performance I can recall from him, and not just as Tristan. It was as tireless a performance as I can recall from anyone, without the disadvantages that often entails of sheer persistence trumping vocalism. The sheer refulgence of René Pape’s King Marke had to be heard to be believed; Markes rarely disappoint, but Pape achieved far more than not disappointing. Alan Held was a thoughtful, dramatic, even at times impetuous Kurwenal: all in character, impressive indeed. Michelle Breedt’s Brangäne was just the right foil for Meier’s Isolde; this was a confidant, beautifully sung, in whom one could – confide. Dean Power’s Young Seaman at the start was as sensitively sung as any I can recall. Kevin Conners offered a powerful embodiment of the Shepherd – Konwitschny’s two English horn players on stage an unforgettable image – and even the Steersman, Christian Rieger, made a fine impression with his all-too-brief line. Francesco Petrozzi presented ultimately inconsequential malevolence, as he should, in the role of Melot.

As Wagner wrote to Eduard Devrient of his ‘most musical score,’ Tristan has, and in performance should have, ‘the most vivid dramatic allusions totally at one with the dynamic of its musical texture’. That is asking a great deal of any conductor, orchestra, and cast. (And that is before we even consider that this is emphatically not a concert work, whatever dark hopes we might entertain upon seeing an unsatisfactory staging.) Philippe Jordan presented Wagner far more impressively than I have heard from him before, whether in Bayreuth or in Paris. The Handlung was as much in the orchestra as on stage, arguably more so, which is just as it should be. Pacing rarely, if ever, faltered, and details were presented without overwhelming (crucial woodwind lines in particular). The splendid Bavarian State Orchestra, whose praises I have been singing all week, excelled itself here. Dark of tone, yet clear and transparent where necessary, it was, in the pit that so much of Tristan und Isolde was truly brought to that life which its director argued so forcefully was of its essence.

VPO/Mehta - Haydn and Bruckner, 19 February 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Haydn – Symphony no.104 in D major, ‘London’
Bruckner – Symphony no.9 in D minor

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Zubin Mehta (conductor)

The best live performance of a Haydn symphony I have ever heard came a few years ago at the Proms: no.103, from the Vienna Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. If this performance of Haydn’s ‘London’ symphony did not quite stand at that level, it was nevertheless very good indeed. Hearing Sir Simon Rattle conduct Haydn and Mozart with the same orchestra at the end of January had made me wonder whether even the Viennese had taken on a few tricks from the authenticists’ casebook. I need not have worried; the present performance made it clear that such concessions must have been exacted by Rattle though gritted teeth as desirous of period dentistry as ‘period performance’. In other words, the VPO under Mehta, a conductor more attuned to its traditions, sounded as glorious as of old.

The strings were of a reasonable size for a large hall (12.10.8.6.4): one of those things that ought to be a matter of course, yet is nowadays increasingly rare. From the outset, the warmth of their vibrato, the delight of the occasional portamento, and the sheer cultivation of the playing were a joy to experience. The first movement’s powerful introduction led into a decidedly moderate-paced Allegro. I had no problem with this, though dogmatists doubtless would, but there was, I admit, just a little stolidity to this movement. Balanced against that – indeed more than balanced – was Mehta’s refusal to adopt extra-musical shock tactics, instead relying upon purely musical means. The Andante was taken at what was perhaps a surprisingly brisk pace, though it never sounded hurried. Mehta and the Viennese players demonstrated that contrapuntal clarity need not mean sacrifice of warmth and body of tone; indeed, it could be enhanced. The minuet was rightly taken three-to-a-bar, allowing for a good balance between poise and a Klemperer-like sturdiness. For the opening of the trio, the oboe solo and pizzicato strings below were as close to perfection as I could imagine, likewise the ensuing contributions from other woodwind instruments. There was a Beethovenian purpose – we are, after all, but a stone’s throw away from Beethoven – to what is often condescended to as a little light relief. The finale was fast but not so much that it ran away with the performers, this not least thanks to Mehta’s absolute rhythmic security. Again, there was a rightful impression of closeness to Beethoven but also a sense of fun, though never of demeaning slapstick. Where many conductors will emphasise the drone bass in an overly rustic sense, here we were reminded of origins but equally of their transformation into music of intellectual brilliance. The climax, when it came, was the more satisfying for the lack of exhibitionism; once again, the means and the thrills were purely musical.

Mehta dedicated the performance of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony to the memory of producer, Christopher Raeburn, news of whose death had reached him and the orchestra upon their arrival in London. Such ‘heavenly music’, in Mehta’s words, seemed a fitting tribute – and so was its performance. The ominous opening ex nihilo inevitably reminded one of that to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but also cast a glance back to the introduction to the opening to the Haydn: a perfect fifth, yet, without a third, not at all clear whether D major or D minor. The first of several apocalyptic orchestral unisons was remarkable for the orchestra’s richness of tone, still more apparent in the material of the second group. Mysterious string tremolandi provided a firm and yet shifting foundation, above which woodwind and noble brass could weave their solo magic. Mehta, a conductor with great experience in the music of the Second Viennese School, was not afraid of those harmonies that point their way towards Schoenberg; nor, however, were they unduly sensationalised. Hints of Parsifal, and not only the more ritualistic outer acts, added to the sense of unfolding drama. At the conclusion to this movement, there could be no doubt that this was a drama of cosmic proportions. Implacable ensemble and rhythmic security characterised the terrifying scherzo. Mehta’s reading was deliberate, as it should be, but never plodding. And then, of course, came the great Adagio, with a sense of completion that would have made any thoughts of a fourth movement superfluous. The opening lament from the violins seemed to look forward to the violas in the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. Tonality, as in the Mahler, evolved rather than appearing as a given. The ensuing Dresden Amen inevitably brought Parsifal back to mind, and throughout Mehta and the VPO reminded us of the equally important influence of Tristan. Clearly they revelled in the luscious harmonies – and who could not? – but there was also a proto-expressionist queasiness to some of the more advanced language, which counselled against easy solutions. If victory there were to be, it would be hard won. For there was soon a sense of something so ineffable as to make even Messiaen seem hopelessly earth-bound. The orchestra’s fullness of tone, without ever the slightest hint of brashness, fitted Bruckner like a glove; the players’ ability seamlessly to blend could not have been more apparent. Even when the brass might have raised the dead incorruptible, there was no striving after mere effect. But after that terrible climax, the silence – whether of faith or of nihilism – was equally unnerving. Romantic attempts to console would follow, but whether it was too late remained – and in this most crucial sense the symphony remained ‘unfinished’ – an open question. Bruckner’s vision may render consolation impossible; at any rate, the concluding bars were numinous to a degree.

Haydn, Berio, and Bartók, VPO/Mehta, 31 March 2008

Musikverein

Haydn - Symphony no.22 in E flat, 'The Philosopher'
Berio - Sinfonia
Bartók - Concerto for Orchestra, Sz 116

Swingle Singers
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Zubin Mehta (conductor)

It is always a joy to hear the Vienna Philharmonic in Haydn. Indeed, perhaps the best live performance of a Haydn symphony I have ever heard was of no.103, the 'Drum Roll', under Zubin Mehta, at the Proms in 2005. If this performance was not quite at that level, it nevertheless remained very good. I was a little surprised at the complement of strings (8.6.6.3.2), wondering whether 'authenticism' has even reached Vienna, but then reflected that this is probably a large band for relatively early Haydn in 2008. There was certainly not a hint of any of the ugliness of tone and other mannerisms we must generally endure nowadays, just a show of good musicianship, at the service of the music and music in general, rather than trying to prove an at-best-dubious point. The sense of a work on the cusp of the Baroque and the Classical was nicely caught, especially in that extraordinary first movement with its stately melancholy. Here, as throughout, the wind instruments - two French horns and two English horns - were, to put it simply and accurately, perfect. The echo of the former by the latter in the 6/8 finale had to be heard to be believed, likewise the ineffable beauty of the horns in the trio of the third movement. Moreover, the strings showed, especially from the second movement onwards, that, in spite of their small number, they lacked nothing in drive, nor in cultured musicianship. A harpsichord continuo was employed. Whilst I remain sceptical of the need of this, it did no harm and was indeed excellent of its kind. I can find nothing really to criticise in Mehta's direction, in which nothing was over-'interpreted'; instead, everything sounded supremely natural.

I shall be delighted to be corrected, but I cannot imagine that the Musikverein has witnessed many performances of Berio's Sinfonia, and still fewer from the jewel in its crown, the VPO. And despite his longstanding advocacy of the Second Viennese School, Mehta is not a conductor I especially associate with post-war new music, though this may simply be ignorance on my part. At any rate, it was good to hear this partnership tackle what must now have become one of the great modern orchestral classics. I do not think that this performance was the last word on Sinfonia, but the orchestra sounded perfectly at ease with its demands. Indeed, it almost sounded like the repertory work it ought to be, but is still not - quite. It was only with the superlative second half of the concert that I realised in retrospect that a certain something had perhaps been lacking; however, I should not wish to exaggerate. There were certainly many moments to savour: everything from the wonderful percussion section, and the first time I heard the first flute, whose playing was beyond compare (as it would be in the Bartók). Hearing the Rosenkavalier quotations from the Vienna strings sent an apposite shiver down my spine. It did Mehta great credit that there were no awkward corners whatsoever, as there had been just occasionally at last year's Proms performance. Common to both performances were the Swingle Singers, who once again proved extremely fine, if anything even better on this occasion. The hushed, all-vocal opening bars of the fourth movement were quite magical. There was, however, a problem in terms of hearing the words. This may have been owed to where I was sitting - above the orchestra and towards the back - and one does not expect to hear every word, but it was a pity. I do not, however, think that this was a consequence of the performance as such. The reception from the audience was less than rapturous - two elderly ladies sitting behind me talked throughout much of the performance - so it served right those who had gracelessly and immediately risen to their feet for the interval that they missed the two Bach encores the Swingle Singers performed. The second, the Badinerie from the B minor Orchestral Suite was taken breathtakingly, almost absurdly, fast, but was great fun nevertheless.

I have heard the VPO once before in Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, under Boulez, and had wondered then whether this was simply a work in which the orchestra would fail to sound idiomatic. It was not that it had been a bad performance, but it had ultimately fallen some way short of the best. Perhaps the musical partnership had not been quite right, however wonderful the VPO often sound under Boulez. There was no such worry on this occasion, for here one had ample cause to recall that Bartók's musical outlook was formed and nurtured in Austria-Hungary. The large string section sounded as only it could, albeit with no compromise regarding rhythmic exactitude. Every section of the orchestra sounded at its tremendous best, both solistically and in terms of blend where required. The woodwind 'night music' of the third movement and the blazing - but never crude - brass in the fifth particularly stick in my mind, but that does not reflect upon anyone else. Mehta showed himself perfectly at ease with the score - as with the Haydn, he conducted from memory - and, the very occasional exaggerated rubato apart, was largely inobtrusive in the best sense. Obvious direction came where necessary, rather than seeming imposed. What can often seem frenetic, not least during the finale, here did not, which I appreciated for more than simply being a change. For excellent all-round musicianship, I am not sure that I have heard a better Concerto for Orchestra.