Salzburg Festival (6) - Pollini: Schoenberg, Nono, and Beethoven, 18 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

Schoenberg: Three Piano Pieces, op.11

Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19

Nono: …..sofferte onde serene…

Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.31 in A-flat major, op.110

Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.32 in C minor, op.111

Maurizio Pollini (piano)

André Richard (sound direction)

Much to admire here, as ever, from Maurizio Pollini. If not everything we heard spoke quite with the control it might once have done, and some of Schoenberg’s op.11 Three Piano Pieces sounded a little neutral, the sense not only of musical understanding but of music’s ethical role remained undimmed, arguably even heightened in the latter case. Motivic insistence was to the fore in the first of those Schoenberg pieces: Brahms singing through post-Wagnerian harmony. If the hyper-Romanticism one often finds here were not so prominent, anticipations of the serial Schoenberg, especially the Piano Concerto, were more so. The second piece received a performance of unusual intimacy; even at its starkest, sounds dissolving before our ears. The nagging obstinacy of Schoenberg’s ostinato seemed very much to attain an ethical dimension: an integrity closely allied to that of the pianist himself. If the third piece confounded Busoni, when sent the music by Schoenberg, it did not Pollini, whose clarification of texture and structure again seemed to look forward to the later Schoenberg.

The Six Little Pieces, op.19, received a wonderful performance. (Or should that be ‘wonderful performances’? I am never quite sure, a problem which perhaps tells us something about the ambiguity of such ‘pieces’ and their part in a greater whole.) The first, distilled, more intimate still – audience bronchial activism notwithstanding – displayed such variety of articulation, all at the service of the phrase and its place in the greater structure, as to further the illusion of a ‘natural’ outpouring. The starkness of obstinacy was again to the fore in the second, the third and fifth pieces offering, in work and performance, music as perfectly chiselled as Mozart. There came further contrast in between them, in the fourth, but also synthesis: latent violence and grace. And the sixth, famously inspired by Mahler’s funeral, ‘wie ein Hauch’: one could almost see and feel the graveyard and its chill: then and now. Magical.

In Nono’s …..sofferte onde serene…, written for Pollini, we heard the sounds of the city (Venice), its sights, fears, possibilities surrounding us. It was, of course, a human city, no mere collection of buildings or even waterways, though those played their parts. More strongly than ever, I was put in mind of the wonderful 2001 film by Bettina Ehrhardt, A Trail on the Water: Abbado – Nono – Pollini. This was ultimately a world not of conflict, but of cooperation: a vision of what might be, as well as a reflection of what is (or was). Such an imperative to listen, and joy in doing so, offered a communion that, if not strictly theological, was not without its religious impulse. The music’s unfolding proved as inevitable as it was surprising.

Simple yet proliferating, never quite to be reduced to either, the first movement of Beethoven’s op.110 sonata, was taken relatively swiftly. The marriage we heard of the intractable and serene, whilst unmistakeably Beethovenian, also made connections with the Schoenberg pieces heard earlier. Much the same might be said of the second movement, a few technical difficulties in the trio notwithstanding. The mystery of the third movement’s opening harmony – where were we? – led inexorably to the sadness of that final song, to the fugue, both ways up, and somewhere beyond. If, towards the close, one might have wished for a little more of the clarity of Pollini’s earlier years, direction and, again, ethical imperative remained undimmed.

Finally, op.111: one of those works in which we feel we have ventured as far as it is possible for us to go. (‘Caminantes, no hay caminos. Hay que caminar,’ as Nono read in a monastery inscription, inspiring him at the end of his life to continue to travel, a lack of paths both necessity and inspiration.) Beethoven’s reckoning, perhaps not final yet certainly late, with his life-long C minor daemon, sounded with all the impetuosity of his youth, the development section in particular a battle both fierce and tender, two sides of the same humanist coin. The second movement was possessed by a noble simplicity that yet contained so much within it. Here, Pollini sounded to me unquestionably at his greatest, continuing to question and to relish the strangeness of Beethoven’s variations, as early as the first. Transformation was very much a numinous thing of wonder, no mere ‘process’, just as in Schoenberg and Nono. And yet, there was always grit in the oyster: this was human music, not entirely transcendent, whatever that may mean. The sheer energy with which Pollini scaled this most extraordinary of peaks offered a standing rebuke to his dreary detractors, thrilling to an almost unbearable extent (in the very best way). ‘Sublime’ may be a word overused, but it is unavoidable here, the music’s close so pure, so gossamer white. Deconstruction we can leave until another day. As for the idiot who immediately disrupted the spell with a puerile shout of ‘Bravo!’…

Salzburg Festival (5) - Soloists/Mozarteum/Pichon: Mozart, Paisiello, Salieri, and Martín y Soler, 18 August 2019

Grosser Saal

La folle giornata

Mozart: Lo sposo deluso, KV 430/424a: Overture, Quartet, ‘Ah che ridere!’, and Aria, ‘Dove mai trovar quel ciglio?’

Paisiello: Il barbiere di Sivilgia: Cavatina, ‘Saper bramate’

Mozart: Recitative and aria, ‘Bella mia fiamma, addio’ – ‘Resta, oh cara’, KV 528; Insertion aria, ‘Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia,’ for Vincente Martín y Soler’s Il burbero di buon cuore, KV 582; L’oca del Cairo: Aria, ‘Ogni momento dicon le donne’; Canzonetta, ‘Ridente la calma,’ KV 152/210a; Nocturne (trio), ‘Se lontan, ben mio, tu sei,’ KV 438

La scuola degli amanti

Mozart: Der Schauspieldirektor, KV 486: Overture; Aria, ‘Männer suchen stets zu naschen’, KV 433/416c; Aria, ‘Io ti lascio, oh cara, addio’, KV Anh.245/621a; Der Schauspieldirektor: Arietta: ‘Da schlägt die Abschiedsstunde’

Salieri: La scuola de’ gelosi: Sextet, ‘Son le donne sopraffine’

Mozart: Lo sposo deluso: ‘Che accidenti! Che tragedia!’; Canzonetta, ‘Più non si trovano,’ KV 549

Il dissoluto punito

Mozart: Thamos, König in Ägypten: Entr’acte: Maestoso-Allegro

Vicente Martín y Soler: Una cosa rara: Sextet, ‘O quanto un sì bel giubilo’

Mozart: Recitative and aria, ‘Così dunque tradisci’ – ‘Aspri rimorsi atroci’, KV 432/421a; Aria, ‘Vado ma dove? oh Dei!’, KV 583; Aria, ‘Per pietà, non ricercate’; L’oca del Cairo: Sextet, ‘Corpo di Satanasso!’; Thamos, König in Ägypten: Chorus, ‘Ne pulvis et cinis superbe te geras’, and final music to the fifth act of the play

Claire de Sévigné, Siobhan Stagg (sopranos)

Lea Desandre (mezzo-soprano)

Mauro Peter (tenor)

Huw Montague Rendall (baritone)

Robert Gleadow (bass)

Choir of Soloists from the Young Artists’ Project

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Raphaël Pichon (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

Now this is just what the Salzburg Festival should be doing in its longstanding Mozart-Matinee series: one of the most delightful and thought-provoking I have yet to attend. Divided into three ‘scenes’, each accorded as title the subtitle of one of the Da Ponte operas, this concert, from an excellent cast of young singers, the Mozarteum Orchestra, and Raphaël Pichon, offered suggestions as to inspirations, sources, context, and sometimes just affinities between music for a number of principal characters in each opera from other works by Mozart and contemporaries. So, for ‘La folle giornate’, we welcomed to the stage the Count, Countess, Figaro, Susanna, Cherubino, and Dr Bartolo; for ‘La scuola degli amanti’, the full Così sextet; and for ‘Il dissoluto punito’, its entire cast too. Arrangements, where necessary, were credited to Pierre-Henri Dutron and Vincent Manac’h. One may sometimes have quibbled about the programme attribution of certain parts to certain others, but that was part of the fun and enlightenment. We all approach these greatest of operas in different ways, with different ears, with different memories, at different times. One of the great losses of recent years in the Festival has been that of a core Mozart ensemble of singers, often singing the major operas for several years in succession. This concert not only hinted at that time-honoured practice, but also brought many thoughts to mind of Mozart’s own work with particular singers on particular operas.

A decent-sized orchestra for a small hall (strings 8.7.6.4.3) played with verve, vigour, and great sensitivity, all on show in a warm account of the Overture to the operatic fragment, Lo sposo deluso, its second, Andante section winningly prayerful – reminding us that Mozart, like any good man (or woman) of the Enlightenment, made little or no distinction between sacred and secular. (Such, in broadest outline, will be the starting point for my next book.) I may have preferred more string vibrato there, but such was Pichon’s style, and my ears soon adjusted. Moaning that this was not Colin Davis would rather have missed the point on this very particular occasion. Pichon handled very well the transition to the quartet, ‘Ah che ridere!’ from our reassigned Count, Countess, Figaro, and Cherubino, all of whom excelled in concert-ish-performance acting too: the knowing glance, the perfection of timing, and so on. Mozart’s prophetic progression to full vocal ensemble: well, we know very well where that was heading. Huw Montague Rendall’s following aria marked him out as perhaps first among equals for me, though I had no complaints from any of the singers. It was, in any case, an absorbingly full, characterful performance, quite as vivid as any on stage. Mauro Peter’s aria from the ‘other’ Barber of Seville, Giovanni Paisiello’s, was beautifully sung, capturing the sense that this was far more straightforwardly Italian a serenade than anything Mozart would have written – and more seductive than anything Rossini would. Paisiello’s lovely writing for pizzicato strings (as well as mandolin) and clarinet was relished by players and conductor alike. Siobhan Stagg’s concert aria suffered a little from unduly ascetic violins, especially during the recitative, but my goodness, she knew how to use recitative – as, of course, did Mozart, in accompagnato of extraordinary musico-dramatic riches. As for his chromaticism in the aria itself, we were but a stone’s throw already from Wagner and Schoenberg. Lea Desandre’s coloratura was sometimes a little shaky in the insertion aria Mozart wrote for Vicente Martín y Soler’s Il burbero di buon cuore, but her tone was nicely suggestive of Cherubino. A vigorous contribution from Robert Gleadow, a palpably sincere – if a little too ‘white’ for my taste – early canzonetta from Claire de Sévigné, and a refreshing choice for ‘finale’, the delectable Metastasian ‘Se lontan, ben mio, tu sei’, rounded off a first scene that, like Figaro itself, had one straining for more.

On then, after the interval, to ‘La scuola degli amanti’ and ‘Il dissoluto punito’. If Pichon, here as elsewhere, never quite managed to hear, or at least to communicate, the Schauspieldirektor Overture in a single breath, it had pleasing weight and vigour. Gleadow, who, it was revealed was suffering from excruciating back pain, offered a lovely Don Alfonso-ish aria, to which Montague Rendall responded with a poignancy that threatened almost to eclipse his own Guglielmo and touch the (allegedly) more sensitive Ferrando. If I thought the ‘Fiordiligi’ Schauspieldirektor number closer to Pamina, that opera was not on offer here – and the final coloratura made its own point. Salieri’s sextet from his strikingly similar (in plot) 1778 La scuola de’ gelosi, to a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà (librettist for Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, after Metastasio), was, like the Paisiello number, more straightforwardly Italian, less contrapuntal – but then, it would be, and not only because it was written for Venice. Mozart, upon a return to Lo sposo deluso, followed on seamlessly, almost immediately demonstrating who was the greater composer and dramatist, but then, he would. A Metastasian closing number, again written for quartet and three basset horns, offered prayerful continuity with the first scene as well as a degree of contrast in the same respect. What could be more apt?

We stepped back slightly in time for the final scene, to the second of the three Da Ponte operas, or rather to music in its orbit. For ‘Il dissoluto punito’, we opened and indeed closed with some of the astonishing incidental music for Thamos, King of Egypt. Here was the full-bloodedly Romantic Mozart we knew from the piano concertos as well as from Don Giovanni, the Mozart ETA Hoffmann had no doubt was of his party. On hearing the sextet from Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara, we might well by now have replied, like Leporello on hearing a snatch of ‘Non più andrai’, ‘Questa poi la conosco pur troppo’, so often have we heard its quotation in Don Giovanni. But why? What a lovely opportunity, not least in so compelling a rendition, to hear the original, genuinely admired, it would seem, by Mozart. Its move to the minor was perhaps especially interesting – and quite differently accomplished from any instance I could immediately recall in Mozart. Gleadow’s aria, once again, spoke wonderfully on its own terms; no one would surely have known the conditions under which he was having to sing. Desandre’s, which followed, displayed here absolute control of her instrument and clarity of line, was well as a wonderful way with Italian. Peter (or ‘Don Ottavio’) offered typical sincerity in his preceding a splendid clarion call (Montague Rendall) and full ensemble from the unfinished L’oca del Cairo. I do not think I have ever heard the music leap from the page with such joy. That, in a sense, was the ‘finale’; but, in an inversion of the practice of Don Giovanni, we returned to the tragic, minor mode, Montague Rendall leading his colleagues, an additional quartet of vocalists included, in a magnificent, Gluck-haunted ‘Ne pulvis et cinis superbe te geras’. If this were not sacred music in the fullest sense, I do not know what would be.

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.

Salzburg Festival (3) – Mutter/WEDO/Barenboim: Previn, Sibelius, and Beethoven, 16 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

André Previn: Violin Concerto, ‘Anne-Sophie’: third movement, ‘(from a train in Germany)’

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op.47

Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

For the third and final of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s Salzburg appearances this year, the players and Daniel Barenboim were joined by Anne-Sophie Mutter, for one-and-a-third violin concertos. The third-fraction was the final movement of André Previn’s work, written for Mutter and named after her, the movement in question a set of variations on the song, ‘Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär’. She is clearly fond of the work, although it is difficult to imagine we shall hear much of it from anyone else; at any rate, performance of a single movement afforded a touching tribute, without outstaying its welcome. Korngold, Prokofiev, Walton, even occasionally Berg haunted its pages: rather as one might have expected. It is not so much reactionary music, as simply what it is, never pretending to be anything else. Mutter here, as later, was on outstanding form, her tone centred, and focused, the music knowingly playing to her strengths, supported not only by a gorgeous orchestral sound, but by players and a conductor who knew where things were heading and how to get there. The soloist’s final sustained note, fading into nothing, made for a loving farewell to a mentor, sometime husband, and collaborator.

Sibelius, I am afraid, is a composer whose music I have never really been able to get on with. My loss, doubtless. I put the symphonies to one side some time ago, deciding that there was little point in persistently trying and getting nowhere: better to wait until they came knocking at the door again. Although I have found many of the shorter pieces, whether songs or orchestral works, attractive, I have likewise avoided the Violin Concerto for some time, initially nonplussed by it. If I cannot imagine it ever being my favourite work in the genre – though who knows? – I am delighted to report the extent to which I was won over, my reservations confounded and quite forgotten. Sometimes it pays to wait not just for the right time, but for the right performers. For me, at least, Mutter, the Divan Orchestra, and Barenboim proved very much that. Mutter’s tone for the opening was different: less glamorous, with tighter vibrato, her line nevertheless built swiftly and surely with evident passion and belief. It was a long line, yet variegated. Barenboim attended to harmonic rhythm with all the understanding one would expect. This first movement emerged as not un-Wagnerian at times: not just the sound, but, in Barenboim’s hands, dramatic timing too. The depth and vigour of the Divan strings did no harm whatsoever either. Mutter’s cadenza was as nourishing as it was thrilling, the vehemence of the movement’s close quite stirring from all concerned. There was more than a little Wagner to the slow movement’s opening clarinet and oboe duo, Mutter responding with a rich, yet never thick, solo of her own. It was unashamedly ‘Romantic’, yet with an awareness that the term meant something quite different from what it might have done twenty-five or fifty years earlier. The movement spoke ‘for itself’, not unduly or even noticeable moulded, Barenboim attentive in the best way. Virtuosity at the service of the score characterised the finale. I doubt one would hear its opening solo played with greater clarity or understanding today, the orchestra responding in (darker) kind. And so on and so forth, our musicians excellent guides. This prior sceptic found himself entirely won over.

With Beethoven we were firmly on Barenboim’s home territory – and his orchestra’s. The Seventh Symphony’s first movement introduction can rarely, if ever, have sounded replete with potentiality, with hope. (How we need that right now!) Haydn radicalised: is that not what Beethoven is, in many ways? From the outset, harmony was the symphony’s guiding force. (Why, apparently, do so many conductors fail to realise or at least to communicate this? As if Beethoven had no harmonic understanding…!) Every new phrase, every new section of a sequence, was developmental, generative, the transition to the exposition proper almost responsorial. Barenboim’s great friend and colleague, Pierre Boulez, would surely have nodded smiling assent. And the moment of arrival was, paradoxically, or better, dialectically, both decisive and almost imperceptible. Above all, though, there was meaning; this was music that mattered: I had shed a couple of tears before the advent of the second group. All the virtues of the introduction were carried forward, developed, transformed, Barenboim’s leading of his musicians an object lesson in symphonic form. Not only did we face the tonal universe in an almost Newtonian sense; we explored it, as humans do, as humans all will. To have those musicians playing as if their lives depending on it, a strong, decisive, generative bass line (ten cellos, eight double basses) reminded us what Beethoven can be, should be, must be, yet sadly, tragically, in these diminished times of ours, so rarely is. What struck me once the movement, coda and all, was over was how it had passed in the twinkling of an eye: as concise, so it seemed, as its opposite number in the Fifth Symphony.

Taken attacca, the nobility of the second movement, voiced with surpassing musical excellence and understanding, pursued the humanistic tale. A requiem for our hopes? No, although perhaps a moment to consider, to reconsider, to begin to achieve them. This, once again, was awe-inspiring Beethoven, such as only Barenboim can summon up today. Harmony and counterpoint alike offered an absolutely necessary coming together: political in every sense. This is our music; let us never forget that. Fresh, determined, the scherzo never hinted at outstaying its welcome, as it can in lesser performances, its trio offering new, yet related vistas and hopes. Mahler would have understood the marriage, the interdependence, of physical and metaphysical. And how this music, so often grimly driven, danced with delight! Much the same might be said of the finale, albeit with very different material and, ultimately, purpose. It was a whirlwind in the best sense: all-enveloping, directed, yet embracing us. ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen…’ Content and form, style and idea were indissoluble: dialectically sparring and, yes, mutually embracing. The apotheosis, then, of human, necessary revolution.

Salzburg Festival (2) – Argerich/Barenboim/Members of the WEDO - Prokofiev and Schumann, 15 August 2019

Haus für Mozart

Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes, op.34

Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op.44

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor, op.105

Schumann: Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10

Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim (pianos)

Michael Barenboim, Mohammed Hiber (violins)

Miriam Manasherov (viola)

Astrig Siranossian, Adi Tal (cellos)

Jussef Eisa (clarinet)

Ben Goldscheider (horn)

Schumann chamber music, with a Prokofiev overture: in this case a chamber overture, that ‘on Hebrew themes’, op.34. Martha Argerich and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra treated us to a faithful, captivating performance, through the piece’s various twists and turns. Clarinettist, Jussef Eisa offered a sinuous Klezmer solo, set nicely against rhythmically insistent playing from the rest of the small band, all of whose solo passages made their mark keenly when required. It is a work I have long held dear, having played the piano part a few times for a sixth-form ensemble. Had I heard Argerich then, I may well have given up in despair – which may or may not have been a good thing.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet likewise brought out the best in its players, the first movement opening forthright, yet soon melting as it should in Argerich’s hands. It would be more or less impossible for her presence not to be first among equals here, but this was true chamber music playing from all concerned, with no sense of being overwhelmed. A cello and viola duet could be just as wonderfully ‘accompanied’ by her – and was. A proper sense of structure becoming dynamic form was felt, the exposition ‘repeat’ no mere repeat, the development duly exploratory. There was sadness, too, in the recapitulation, Schubert’s example perhaps especially apparent both there and in a searching, enigmatic account of the second movement. There were visions of other worlds, yes, but it was not necessarily vouchsafed to us what they were. Argerich on piano proved the securest of foundations for a propulsive scherzo, exultant, whilst nonetheless bearing memorial traces of what had preceded it. Instrumental poetry, ever the key to Schumann, characterised in different ways the two trios. The finale’s character can be difficult to judge, or at least to convey: not so here, its corners navigated with skill and conviction, motivic working and poetic mood as one. Brahms may at times have been but a stone’s throw away, but this remained unmistakeably Schumann. Affinity is not, after all, identity.

Having served ably as first violin in both of these works, Michael Barenboim took the stage with Argerich after the interval for the first of Schumann’s violin sonatas. They proved well matched, not unlike the first movement’s Romantic turbulence and Innigkeit. Barenboim’s tone was beautifully centred, with well-judged vibrato and occasional portamento; Argerich was, well, Martha Argerich, the nagging motivic insistence of her part never too much, though how it mattered. The central Allegretto benefited from rapt yet never precious lyricism and an elfin fantasy that again foretold the world of Brahms. Quicksilver changes of mood in the finale, never quite to be likened to one another, were effected by both musicians with ineffable musicality. Instrumental balance was, quite simply, never an issue. (If only I might say the same for student performances I should rather forget…)

The 1843 Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos, and horn in B-flat major, WoO 10, is an engaging rarity. In performances that seemed already to look forward to a welcome brace of encores, Argerich and Barenboim senior imparted different yet kindred ‘voices’ to their instruments, without one necessarily being able to say how, let alone why. Much the same might be said of cellists, Astrig Siranossian and Adi Tal. Together with horn player, Ben Goldscheider, the unusual ensemble offered mercurial yet responsive performances; the players drew us in, led us on paths both familiar and surprising. A quotation from Frauenliebe und –leben – aptly, perhaps, for the two female cellists – drew me up sharp. What are we to make of it? Whatever we wish, I suppose. It must surely have made Clara Schumann smile when the work was first played, likewise her piano partner, Felix Mendelssohn.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Argerich/WEDO/Barenboim: Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Lutosławski, 14 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert: Symphony no.8 in B minor, D 759, ‘Unfinished’

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no.1 in B-flat minor, op.23

Lutosławski: Concerto for Orchestra

Martha Argerich (piano)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

Most likely our greatest living Schubert conductor, Daniel Barenboim lent credence to the claim in this West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performance of the Unfinished, the best I can recall since Bernard Haitink and the LSO ten years ago – and with the benefit of a far superior hall and acoustic to the Barbican, let alone the Royal Albert Hall, where Barenboim and his musicians had given the same programme a couple of nights earlier. Opening truly de profundis – an orchestra with a string section of this size truly helps here – and febrile, generative, it was clear from the outset that this would be special. This, it seemed, was music that had always been – waiting, Schopenhauer-like, to be voiced. Teeming with melody, ever grounded in harmony, it was music that both could not wait, yet must, until the abyss: the onset of the development section. Dark, rich strings and brings, offset by forest woodwind took us by the hand, grabbed us by the scruff of the neck: they did what was necessary, as did Schubert. Battle royal ensued, the intensity such as to have thoughts of Furtwängler well-nigh inescapable. Intimations of Wagner were doubtless not unrelated. In the recapitulation, all had been changed – forever. That is what happens when music, when music-making, matters. We had seen death, but this was no place to be maudlin, for we had looked it, ‘whatever ‘it’ may be, in the face. The coda’s grave beauty told us all we needed to know. Balance and progression were felt, experienced in the second movement. Its debts to Haydn were rendered lovingly clear: rusticity, yes, but also method, a method that helped render Schubert’s farsighted Romanticism all the more remarkable and poignant, not least in woodwind solos and string responses. It was perhaps, though, the transitions that told us most, not least those that might have seemed ‘mere’ silence on the page. Fernhören, then, as Furtwängler would have put it, but also Fernspielen.

Martha Argerich joined the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. These players, Barenboim too, have a lengthy and distinguished track record in Tchaikovsky’s music, which showed in the assured swagger of the opening, to which those piano chords were the only possible response. The depth of tone on which Argerich could draw, and did, was as remarkable as ever, likewise the variety of meaningful articulation. Her soulful skittishness rubbed off on the woodwind, and vice versa, so much of what we heard chamber music writ large. Lest all we heard seem a little too Mendelssohnian, there were Schumannesque reverie, muscle too, and backbone: this was a piano tigress of surpassing versatility, with double octaves that would have had Liszt himself sit up. I am no friend of applause between movements, but could readily have forgiven it here. There was none; instead, a good few audience members elected to chatter during the pizzicato opening to the second movement. Insofar as I could tell, it sounded lovely. A fine balance was struck, at any rate, between subsequent simplicity and complexity (not least but certainly not only metrical). There was little doubt where the finale was heading, urgent without a hint of the hard-driven, like the final flow of a mighty river and the human life gathered on its banks. For this was a performance full of delightful incident, first to be savoured, then fondly recalled. As an encore, Barenboim and Argerich treated us to a few minutes of decidedly superior domesticity: the Schubert A major Rondo, D 951, its lengths above all heavenly, Barenboim’s closing trill to die for.

A Concerto for Orchestra makes excellent sense as repertoire for a youth orchestra. The young players certainly seemed to relish the challenges of Lutosławski’s, in this splendidly vivid performance. Foreboding was in the air of the opening: foreboding that perhaps already had a sense of something beyond, a possible destination, Barenboim hearing and communicating form and possibilities, horizontal and vertical, as vividly as he had that of the Schubert symphony. Bartók’s spirit was present, of course; how could it not be? Prokofiev’s too, probably. These, however, were welcome guests at the feast, unease always present enough to prevent any folkloric elements from cloying. Scurrying and slide-slipping, the second movement again brought Prokofiev to mind. Fantasy and obstinacy were held in excellent balance, such as could only have resulted from playing of considerable excellence. Barenboim captured to a tee the decidedly post-war mood of the finale’s passacaglia section: Zimmermann as much as Shostakovich, though that is not in any straightforward sense to ascribe ‘influence’. Likewise the toccata, whose fantastical qualities – colour, rhythm, harmony – again brought Prokofiev to the fore, perhaps above all in a cacophonous passage that might almost have come from The Fiery Angel, or Le Pas d’acier. It was Bartók who emerged most clearly in the closing chorale section, yet with space and clarity that enabled us to hear difference as well as similarity. If the finale still sounded a little drawn out to me, that is doubtless my problem; I cannot recall a performance that made greater sense of it.

Bayreuth Festival (4) - Tannhäuser, 13 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Stephen Milling

Tannhäuser – Stephen Gould

Wolfram von Eschenbach – Markus Eiche

Walther von der Vogelweide – Daniel Behle

Biterolf – Kay Stiefermann

Heinrich der Schreiber – Jorge Rodriguez-Norton

Reinmar von Zweter – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Elisabeth – Lise Davidsen

Venus – Elena Zhidkova

Young Shepherd – Katharina Konradi

Four Pages – Cornelia Ragg, Lucila Graham, Annette Gutjahr, Elena Zhidkova

Le Gateau Chocolat – Le Gateau Chocolat

Oskar – Manni Laudenbach

Tobias Kratzer (director)

Rainer Sellmaier (designs)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Manuel Braun (video)

Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Eight years after I last saw Tannhäuser at Bayreuth, in Sebastian Baumgarten’s truly bizarre production, came the highlight, for me at least, of this year’s Festival: Tobias Kratzer’s new staging, conducted not by Valery Gergiev, as expected, but in a last-minuted substitution, Christian Thielemann. Not only was this unquestionably the best staging I have seen of the work in years; not only was it the best Wagner I have heard from Thielemann since the very first time I heard him (Meistersinger, 2000); it convinced me in a way no other performance and production have that there are genuine dramatic, as well as stylistic, reasons for giving Tannhäuser in its (almost) original, Dresden version.*

As the Overture plays, we see the Wartburg on film. We then see a troupe in a van – action switches between film and stage, or combines the two with outstanding skill and insight – making its way there. Or is it, perhaps, making its way from there, to the Bayreuth Festspielhaus? It could be either; after all, we are not all [cue: Anglican clerical voice] ‘in a very real sense,’ on our way between the two? Tannhäuser as clown (Stephen Gould), Venus (Elena Zhidkova), the voluptuous Le Gateau Chocolat (as herself), and the diminutive Oskar (Manni Laudenbach, surely a reference to Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum) are clearly used to a few scrapes on the road, not least when Venus splits her time between driving and entertaining her grotto guest. A pitstop at Burger King goes horribly wrong, a policeman spying Gateau Chocolat and Oskar drawing petrol from another vehicle and coming to confront the troupe after Venus has offered its update Young German motto, ‘Frei im Wollen/Frei im Thun/Frei im Geniessen/R[ichard] W[agner]’ as payment. (Or, as Don Giovanni might have put it, ‘Viva la libertà!’) In a move that clearly shocks the others, Venus puts her foot down and kills the policeman. Thus is the scene set for the nearby guest house. Oskar faces a surprise with the kitschy gnomes outside, and more seriously, Tannhäuser decides to make a break with the gang and make his own way to the Festspielhaus and, presumably, also in life.

The pilgrims, the Bayreuth audience itself, are of course on their way to a performance: his performance; at least it should be, if he deigns to turn up on time. If the fellow Minnesänger, studying their vocal scores – Tannhäuser always has his upon him – and taking the occasional sip of a local brew, are more relaxed about Tannhäuser’s return to the fold, Elisabeth, in a brief appearance, shows her true feelings, slapping his face in the wake of jeopardising the entire performance. This is the first, but far from the last, occasion on which we realise that Elisabeth is here a flesh-and-blood human being, no mere virginal saint. And then, we in the audience make a reverse progression down the hill to an interval show from Gateau Chocolat and Oskar, inflatable unicorn, fabulous new bathing costume, and all.

On returning to the house, we see a splendid Wartburg recreation set. It is the Festspielhaus after all, then, not the Wartburg ‘itself’. Elisabeth alternates between fury and arousal, as one – perhaps not Wagner – might expect. Such roleplaying, metatheatrical to a determined, in many respects deeply moving, end, divests the work of many of those problems with dramatic motivation it has often been held, not least by Carl Dahlhaus, to present. Mythology, history, performance, reception, psychological realism, and more can happily coexist, come into conflict. Is that not the very stuff of drama? And is not love, ‘whatever that means’, as the Prince of Wales once had it, always a ‘show’ too? Such is very much what Tannhäuser ‘itself’ is about, is it not?

Having narrowly missed Tannhäuser outside the Festspielhaus at the end of the first act, the troupe-as-was invades the house (on film) during the Arrival of the Guests, emblazoning the balcony with a flag declaring its Wagnerian motto. Venus deals with one of the pages so that she can take her place in the hall, whilst Gateau Chocolat and Oskar wander around the house, taking in a few images of previous conductors (Thielemann, ironically given the substitution, one of them, and much to Gateau Chocolat’s taste, and James Levine – well, the less said the better). Knowing neither her lines nor her moves, Venus must be kept in line – good luck with that – by one of the other pages. Nevertheless, she just about maintains her cover for a while, until all hell breaks loose. Shades of Ariadne auf Naxos, as two operatic worlds collide? Inevitably, but this remains its own tale. Venus sheds a layer, puts on her own show, to the shock of respectable singers and patrons. She dances, to what is supposedly Tannhäuser’s own music, to win him back, but reminds us that he never really has his own musical style; rather, he assimilates to wherever he is. Does that make him an artist, or…? You decide. He still has his score. Meanwhile, the security guard on film has alerted Katharina Wagner, who calls the police. They pause for a while before the unfurled motto, before doing what they must, and closing down the show(s).

The world-weariness, even despair, of the opening to the third act is evoked powerfully onstage – as well as in the pit – by a wasteland, in which the van has crashed and/or taken root, only Oskar remaining. (We later learn that Gateau Chocolat has gone solo, making it to the big time, her image gracing an advertisement for eponymous watches. That’s show business, we suppose.) Elisabeth still needs Tannhäuser; indeed she needs him more than ever, so much so that she has poor Wolfram dress in Tannhäuser’s clown costume. Then, and only then, can she welcome him into the van; then, and only then, and even then after a good deal of self-persuasion, can Wolfram take her. Shades of Siegfried/Gunther/Brünnhilde? Again, the suggestion is made, or at least can be, but the drama plays out on its own terms. And of course, then and only then can Elisabeth die. It is too late for Tannhäuser himself; he finally tears apart his cherished vocal score. Tannhäuser is free of Tannhäuser. And so, at the close, in a staff-sprouting miracle for our own time, Tannhäuser and Elisabeth are united at last, resurrected, as is the van, in which they drive off into the sunset. Fantasy? The after-life? An actual happy ending? That, ‘in a very real sense’, is up to us.

The cast responded with excellence and enthusiasm to Kratzer’s vision. Stephen Gould seemed much more at home with the conflicts and opportunities presented by Tannhäuser than he had in Tristan (equally well sung, yet quite without agony). Lise Davidsen’s Elisabeth was as poignantly human as I have ever seen or heard the character – and equally possessed of vocal power, wisely dispensed. Elena Zhidkova grasped the nettle of this particular Venus with everything she had, and made the role her own, ably assisted by her fabulous assistants. If I say that I found Markus Eiche’s Walther every bit as moving as Christian Gerhaher’s, many readers will appreciate the distinction of his performance, if anything perhaps slightly more attuned to verbal subtlety. All Minnesänger roles were sung with great distinction; if I mention in particular Daniel Behle, it is only because Wagner gives him more to do. Stephen Milling’s Landgrave and even Katharina Konradi’s Shepherd offered similarly impressive performances.

So too did the ever-excellent Bayreuth Festival Chorus, once more as distinguished in stage as in vocal terms; Eberhard Friedrich’s stewardship of these singers has not been the least joy of recent years in Bayreuth. So too, last but not least, did Thielemann’s conducting and the simply outstanding playing of the orchestra. Here, stepping in at what seems to have been very short notice, Thielemann showed none of the affectation that had sometimes detracted from his Tristan and Lohengrin. Structure became dynamic form in the moment; ‘beauty’ took care of itself, rather than being imposed upon it. And crucially, both he and Kratzer, who had previously directed a different version*, demonstrated their belief in the coherence and singular interest of the ‘Dresden’ Tannhäuser. Not once – well, save for the lost Bacchanale – did I miss what was ‘not there’. When I heard the musical drama turn otherwise from what is imprinted on my memory, it was unarguably right at that moment and in this context for it to do so. Thielemann, it seems to me, not unlike Simon Rattle, fares best when presented with a challenge. To this challenge, to these challenges, the assembled company rose with excellence. A happy ending, then, indeed, for an ultimately happy troupe.

* For detail on the versions – not quite what many think they are – and other thoughts on the work, please see my Royal Opera House programme note, ‘Owing the World a Tannhäuser. (Click here.)