Gould/London Sinfonietta/RAM Manson Ensemble/Lischke - Boulez and Stockhausen, 5 December 2015

Royal Festival Hall

Boulez – Dérive 1

Boulez – Anthèmes 2
Stockhausen – Hymnen: Region III

Clio Gould (violin)

Sound Intermedia

Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble

London Sinfonietta

Wolfgang Lischke (conductor)

 

It is with great sadness that I find this Boulez anniversary year drawing to a close. What a year it has been, with magnificent performances of the composer’s œuvre across Europe (it would seem far less so in the United States, the New York Philharmonic’s silence unforgivable). Those wishing to programme Boulez’s music should now have every justification they need: a wealth of performers possessed of both passion and excellence, and large audiences, hungry to hear more. (That goes for so much post-war New Music, which, bizarrely, I suppose we can still just about call this repertoire.) Yet I fear that silence will resume come 2016, the most reactionary in the audience – who, for some reason, seem always to have most say – breathing a sigh of relief that they can safely return to wall-to-wall Rachmaninov.

 

Let us hope not and let us do what we can to ensure not. The London Sinfonietta’s performances here were as excellent as one might have expected, arguably still more so. Not least of my musical epiphanies this year was the moment when Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra finally had Dérive 2 click into place for me. What had puzzled me – and what some friends had disdained as unworthy of the composer – stood revealed as the masterpiece Barenboim had claimed. Dérive 1, which I do not think I have heard performed this year otherwise, worked beautifully as an ‘overture’. Boulez’s writing, the Sinfonietta’s playing, and Wolfgang Lischke’s finely-judged direction drew one in: had one lose oneself again in material from Répons and Messagesquisse. What one might, I suppose, call developing variation – Boulez’s fabled Brahms-scepticism notwithstanding – manifested itself with equal clarity and warmth, almost as if we were hearing it from the composer himself. The six chords ‘derived’ from SACHER worked their magic: melodic, harmonic, structural. One felt – as well as knew intellectually – the processes, in an intriguing dialectic between Stravinskian clarity and Debussyan ambiguity, at work, and longed for more, indeed for Dérive 2.

 

Clio Gould’s performance of Anthèmes 2 with the ever-excellent Sound Intermedia was quite outstanding, immediately rendering irrelevant any doubts about the suitability of the venue. Again – and perhaps this was a consequence of a good few performance opportunities throughout the year – connections with other works manifested themselves, but they were of secondary importance when compared with the confidence, virtuosity, and musicality with which Gould performed this indispensable work. It sounded and resounded with all the musical drama and depth of a solo violin work by Bach. In fact, the great D minor Chaconne came to my mind, relevantly or otherwise, as an unacknowledged progenitor. Light and shadow, concision and proliferation, harmony and counterpoint intellectual and emotional drama: all of these and many more combined in ways that seemed created almost on the spot, in order to offer the most ‘compleat’ performance I have heard of the work. The humorous, throw-away ending remains as splendid as ever.

 

Stockhausen probably does even less well than Boulez in performing terms. The last big opportunity I had was the unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime (I fear!) production of Mittwoch in Birmingham. Opera companies across the world should unite, having nothing to lose but their insipid – at best – bel canto chains; instead, Licht languishes unperformed as a whole, anywhere, ever. With this performance of Region III from Hymnen, we heard and again felt just a little of what we were missing. I must admit that I will sometimes approach some of Stockhausen’s pronouncements on his music with a little scepticism. (Surely not?!) However, words from the composer on process and on what I think we can call meaning, words I only read afterwards, seemed to me very much to tally with another fine performance, members of the London Sinfonietta now joined by inspired and inspiring musicians from the Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble. ‘National anthems,’ Stockhausen claimed, are the most familiar music imaginable. … When familiar music is integrated into a composition of unknown, new music, it is possible,’ and here it certainly seemed accomplished, ‘to hear especially well how it was integrated: untransformed, more or less transformed, transposed or modulated. The more self-evident the what, the more attentive one becomes to the how.’ (Think, for instance, of Webern’s and Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions.) Yet, equally importantly, ‘national anthems are more than national anthems; they are “charged” with time, with history – with past, present and future. They accentuate the subjectivity of people in a time when uniformity is all too often mistaken for universality.’ An intriguing, provocative thought, but not just a thought: there seemed in performance to be genuine experience, through those musical processes, of that thought. Objets trouvés took on or, better, continued lives of their own, somewhere in between integration and transformation. We asked what their relationship to us was, had been, might yet be. Insofar as I could tell, the musicians seemed to responding aurally as well as to what was written for them; I do not know the work well enough to be sure. What I can be sure of is that the performance convinced me, and again left me wanting to hear more. Next time, let us hope, more than a single Region, but many thanks indeed are due to the London Sinfonietta for this opportunity, splendidly taken!

The Stockhausen performance was recorded by BBC Radio 3 to form part of its broadcast quadrophonic sound premiere of Hymnen on New Year’s Day, 2016. It is described as being part of its ‘New Year New Music focus’; I suppose we should disregard the unloveliness of the phrase and be grateful that Radio 3 still broadcasts such music at all.

 

Sokolov - Schubert and Chopin, 4 December 2015

Grosser Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna

Schubert – Sonata in A minor, D 784

Schubert – Six Moments musicaux, D 780
Chopin – Nocturne in B major, op.32 no.1
Chopin – Nocturne in A-flat major, op.32 no.2
Chopin – Piano Sonata no.2 in B minor, op.35

Grigory Sokolov (piano)

It is customary for any British writer on Grigory Sokolov to lament his absence from our shores. How can one not, when faced with such formidable pianism? As a friend in Vienna mentioned, only too well aware of our authorities’ attitude towards the arts – sport, is of course different – the Austrian Culture Minister would see at his job to sort out whatever visa impediment was preventing a major artists from visiting Vienna. I should be astonished if any of our succession of Culture Secretaries had even heard of Sokolov, let alone cared that British audiences could not hear him. That is wrong, both in principle and, as this recital showed, in practice.

 

Sokolov’s stress or, better, leaning upon the D-sharp, the third note of the Schubert A minor Sonata’s opening phrase, was something one noticed, not for itself but for the formal and emotional propulsion it elicited. From that first phrase, there was struck a note of inexorable tragedy, close to that of Mozart’s piano sonata in the same key. Rhythm, melody, harmony: all were part of an indivisible whole. The second group in this first movement rightly sounded both as continuation and contrast. Trills seemed to have an import such as one might expect in late Beethoven, although their particular quality was quite different. The development section sounded as if poised, or rather developing, in a space between Mozart and Liszt: which, when one thinks about it, is pretty much spot on for Schubert. The recapitulation sounded almost numb, looking forward to Winterreise; and yet, it moved. The Andante showed a similar match of fearlessness and tenderness, whilst it was the sheer strangeness of the finale that initially registered: as if a Beethovenian moto perpetuo deepened by Mozartian chromaticism, before exploding with a fury that was entirely Schubert’s own. That in turn developed in collaboration – competition? – with a heartstopping lyricism that would not have shamed a performance of one of the song cycles. The interplay between such tendencies of the material fascinated and enthralled; above all, it moved.

 

The Moments musicaux, D 780, were in a state of continual becoming (the German Romantic Werden). No one really thinks of these as mere salon pieces; at least, I hope not! They certainly did not sound as such here, as Sokolov welded them into an almost continuous whole. Their developmental qualities are different from those in pieces by Beethoven; here, the development sounded as strong. Smiling through tears, as a moment – or several – between Mozart and Brahms should, the music sounded possessed at times of an almost manic intensity and insistency, without exaggeration. Rhythms were nicely sprung, born of harmonic motion rather than standing against it. Contrasts were musical, not sentimental.

Two Chopin Nocturnes followed the interval: the B major, op.31 no.2, and the A-flat major, op.32 no.2. The B major piece was surprisingly forthright, albeit with greater rubato as it proceeded. I cannot say that I cared for the throwaway fioriture; Chopin’s melodies need, for me at least, to count for more than that. However, the Lisztian way in which a melody passed from one hand to another was quite something to hear. The A-flat Nocturne was taken very seriously, perhaps too seriously, remaining somewhat earthbound. There was, however, no doubting the integrity of the performance. It may not be how I hear the piece, but who cares?

Chopin’s B minor Sonata likewise benefited from sovereign command of line and harmony, insofar as the two may be separated. It was, again, Liszt who came to mind, some of the material edging forward into the realm of his sonata in the same key. And then, chords would seemingly divide, voices taking on lines of their own – in an almost Wagnerian or Schoenbergian fashion. The Scherzo, and again I mean no adverse criticism by this, also sounded somewhat Lisztified – en-Liszted? – yet, in a performance clearly born of such conviction, I was utterly gripped. Much the same might be said of the Funeral March. Its Trio’s lyricism and Sokolov’s touch therein would have melted hearts sterner than mine. Time seemed almost to stand still, and one wished it so. The return of the March was straightforwardly overwhelming. Taken attacca, the finale was possessed of a strangeness that took my mind back to the final movement of the Schubert sonata, except of course that its course is unrelieved here. It sounded as if a single line, almost a Berio Sequenza avant la lettre, transcribed for piano.

Tosca, Vienna State Opera, 2 December 2015

Vienna State Opera

Images: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

Floria Tosca – Martina Serafin

Mario Cavaradossi – Roberto Alagna
Baron Scarpia – Michael Volle
Cesare Angelotti – Ryan Speedo Green
Sacristan – Alfred Šramek
Spoletta – Benedikt Kobel
Sciarrone – Hans Peter Kammerer
Gaoler – Il Hong
Shepherd Boy – Bernhard Sengstschmid

Margarethe Wallmann (director)

Nicola Benois (revival director)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Dan Ettinger (conductor) 

 

 

 

Tosca is pretty much indestructible, although that does not necessarily prevent opera houses from doing their worst to prove me wrong. Where are the Bieitos, the Konwitschnys, the Herheims, the Katy Mitchells, indeed anyone who might think Puccini and indeed his audiences merit something other than condescension? The Berlin State Opera recently signalled the prospect of something a little more interesting with a new production, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (his first Puccini!), directed by Alvis Hermanis, a director with a mixed record, at best, but at least not renowned for pandering to ‘subscription’ tastes. Whether the staging succeeded, I do not know; given Hermanis’s recent pronouncements, I am unlikely ever to find out. Alas, Dominique Meyer decided, rather than to present a new production at the Vienna State Opera, to reproduce the disintegrating sets and costumes of its existing – I am tempted to say, ‘prehistoric’ – production.

 

That, alas, is precisely what it looks like. Indeed, before I was informed by a friend of Meyer’s strange decision, my thought had been that the sets and costumes reminded me of the horrible if understandable restoration of Dresden’s Frauenkirche. (How much more powerful it was when a pile of rubble: an encounter, from my first visit to that city, I will never forget!) Indeed, what the action, if one can call it that, looked and felt like was really rather curious: some people attempting, without much support, less to ape the manners of the 1950s than to have rediscovered an abandoned set from that period, trying to do something, anything, but not too much, within its confines. Margarethe Wallmann’s production, to our eyes, seems strange, not in an intriguing way, but because the years have hollowed it out of what one presumes once to have been its content. Doubtless a revival director does what she can, and can hardly be held responsible, but a piece of theatre this is not.

 

The answer one often hears to such complaints is that great artists can breathe new life into anything. Perhaps, although I think even Herbert von Karajan and Renata Tebaldi, who featured in its 1957 premiere, might have had difficulty here in 2015. This, at any rate, was not a vintage night in performing terms. Dan Ettinger’s conducting was at best plodding, although there were occasional hints form the orchestra – some gorgeous cello playing in particular – that these were players who might, under a conductor such as Daniele Gatti, produce something world-beating. For the most part, Ettinger seemed content to ‘accompany’: a very odd idea for one of the most symphonic of opera composers. When he did try something, it seemed to be merely to repeat a phrase slower and louder than the last time. This score usually flies by; here, one might have thought it a misfire on the composer’s part.

 

There was better news from the singers – at least until the end (on which more shortly). Martina Serafin is not possessed of the most refulgent of voices, but she did a good deal with what she had, and for the most part proved attentive towards words as well as music. ‘Vissi d’arte’ was, alas, plagued by poor intonation. Roberto Alagna suffered similarly when he first came on stage, but his performance improved dramatically – in more than one sense – thereafter. Indeed, as always, he threw his all into what he was doing, vocally and otherwise. His big aria was beautifully sung, without a hint of playing to the gallery. (Alas, the gallery still responded, holding up what action the production permitted.) Michael Volle seemed strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, out of sorts. He is a great artist, but this is perhaps not his role, or at least this is not his production. His Italian was such that even I found it too Teutonic, and, although he offered greater malice and menace in the second act, the first-act Scarpia seemed oddly avuncular. Ryan Speedo Green was an energetic, dark-voiced Angelotti; I should like to hear more from him.

 

Despite my reservations, I was a little surprised when no one came to receive applause. Eventually, a member of staff came forward to make an announcement. Serafin had fallen awkwardly when making her leap from the ramparts and was unable to return onstage. After that, although the rest of the cast then took their curtain calls, the evening fizzled out, a state of affairs which, alas, did not seem at odds with the staging. I do not doubt that, in 1957, when Wallmann’s production, if we can still call it that, was first seen, with Karajan and Tebaldi, there might have been much to enjoy scenically, as well as musically. Now, however, it would surely be kinder to Wallmann, to Puccini, to the singers, to the audience, to grant it an honourable retirement. As another, supremely theatrical composer, alongside Schoenberg (later) surely the most beneficial influence upon Puccini, once put it: ‘Kinder, macht neues!’

 

Hänsel und Gretel, Vienna State Opera, 29 November 2015

 

 

Vienna State Opera

Peter – Adrian Eröd

Gertrud – Janina Baechle
Hänsel – Daniela Sindram
Gretel – Ileana Tonca
Witch – Michaela Schuster
Sandman, Dew Fairy – Annika Gerhards

Adrian Noble (director)

Anthony Ward (designs)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Andrzej Goulding (video)
Denni Sayers (choreography)

Children of the Vienna State Opera School (chorus master: Johannes Mertl)

Students of the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy

Stage Orchestra and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

 

The great attraction, apart from the imperishable lovability of the work, to this new production of Hänsel und Gretel was clearly the presence of Christian Thielemann as conductor. That proved to be its strongest suit in practice, allied to the Vienna State Opera orchestra on excellent form. One sensed, even if one were not aware already, that the musicians loved playing for him, and they sounded, which is not always to be taken for granted, as they might on summer holiday in Salzburg. The fabled Vienna strings, of late more fallible than many might expect, here sounded both golden and rich by turn, and sometimes simultaneously; their sound combined ‘orchestral’ and ‘chamber’ quality. The brass were warm, weich (tender, although that does not perhaps quite convey the sound of a Viennese horn in Wagnerian repertory), well blended. There was, moreover, plenty of life from the woodwind section, which took its solo opportunities with all the excellence one might have hoped for.

For all that undeniable instrumental excellence, however, it was Thielemann’s ability, as I recall noting in his Dresden Rosenkavalier at about this time last year, to play the orchestra almost as if it were a piano which marked this out as a great performance. Thielemann had the orchestra respond to the ebb and flow both of Humperdinck’s score and his conception thereof, not only as if there were little or no distinction between the two, but also as if this really were chamber music writ large, at least some of the time. There might well be fluctuations in tempo, dynamic contrast, balance, beyond what the literally-minded would expect, but they sounded ‘natural’ – what a multitude of sins is contained in that apparently simple word! – and, above all, dramatically motivated. Wagnerisms pervaded the performance; how could they not? As, however, in the greatest performances of this work, they had one smile rather than grimace, let alone frown. It is increasingly difficult for some of us to put out of our minds – nor, perhaps should we – the conductor’s increasingly bizarre or downright offensive political pronouncements; nevertheless, he remains a great conductor. Perhaps his flaws make him ideal for Strauss, in whose music he has always excelled; his Wagner has often been overrated, which is not to say that he does not have great talent in that respect too. This, at any rate, was in every respect a beautifully Straussian performance of Hänsel und Gretel.

 

Thielemann was of course fortunate to have a good cast. Daniela Sindram clearly relished the trouser role of Hänsel, communicating his awkward boyishness without awkwardness. Ileana Tonca was a properly feminine foil as Gretel; the two worked well together. Adrian Eröd showed his intelligent way with words as their father, with Janine Baechle as a warmly maternal partner to him. I am not entirely convinced that the admirable Michaela Schuster is best suited to the role of the Witch, but she made a good deal of its pantomime possibilities. There was some lovely and some less lovely singing – at times, too much vinegar – from Annika Gerhards.

 

The grave disappointment, however, is Adrian Noble’s School of Cameron Mackintosh staging. That this is an opera born of a Grimm Brothers tale, which tells of child abuse, there is nothing to be seen. There is a world of difference, moreover, between a ‘traditional’ staging which takes the work, perhaps unfortunately, at face value, and one which disingenuously pretends there is no grit to the oyster. Here, with no video expense spared, we seem in the world of a Hollywood ‘product’ rather than German Romantic opera. There is no sense of the children’s plight, even at the most basic level; instead, the lowest common denominator is encouraged to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’. In a programme interview, Noble was asked whether Freud had found his way into the production. ‘Nein, nicht direkt,’ came the response. He need not have bothered with the second and third words of his response.

Le nozze di Figaro, Vienna State Opera, 27 November 2015

 

Images: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Count Almaviva (Adam Plachetka)

 

Vienna State Opera

Count Almaviva – Adam Plachetka

Countess Almaviva – Véronique Gens
Susanna – Aida Garifullina
Figaro – Alessio Arduini
Cherubino – Elena Maximova
Marcellina – Ulrike Helzel
Don Basilio – Thomas Ebenstein
Don Curzio – Peter Jelosits
Don Bartolo – Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Antonio – Manuel Walser
Barbarina – Maria Nazarova

Jean-Louis Martinoty (director)

Hans Schavernoch (designs)
Sylvie de Segonzac (costumes)
Fabrice Kebour (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera (chorus master: Thomas Lang)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera
James Gaffigan (conductor)

 

Four weeks precisely before seeing this Marriage of Figaro in Vienna, I had seen the Royal Academy of Music production at the Hackney Empire. It might sound as if I am exaggerating for effect, but I can assure you that I am not; in almost every respect, the RAM performance was superior. We should not become hung up on matters of cultural ‘ownership’ – Mozart was not really ‘Austrian’ at all, whatever the tourist board might tell you – but that nevertheless gives one pause for thought. Although I said ‘in almost every respect’, other shortcomings were dwarfed by Jean-Louis Martinoty’s catastrophe of a production: at least as bad as, if not worse than, Barrie Kosky’s effort for the Komische Oper in Berlin, albeit in different ways. I had been going to ask why Figaro, so long a relatively ‘safe bet’ with respect to staging – relative, at least, to Don Giovanni – was having such a bad time of it now. (Janet Suzman’s work for that wonderful RAM staging was a noteworthy exception.) Then I learned that Martinoty’s production had actually been imported from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Why? As French friends have since told me, it was bad enough then, in the 1990s. Is it not a little odd that the Vienna State Opera could not create its own new production, even if the import were of better stuff than this?

 

It is difficult to know where to start with Martinoty’s incoherent, joyless mess. I am not sure whether the director is attempting to be ‘traditional’ or something else. The costumes are ‘period’ of a sort, I suppose, but more akin to a Carry On film idea of the eighteenth century than something into which any thought has gone. I have no objection to a properly thought-out ‘period’ production; indeed, there will often be problems, not insurmountable but problems nevertheless, when a society of orders is jettisoned for something else. This just seemed, however, an excuse for opportunities for the mildest, least risqué of molestations. The politics of Mozart’s opera – even Da Ponte’s libretto, shorn of the music – are not those of Beaumarchais, but they are far from non-existent. Here, it seems, we have something that wants to be a bit of a farce, but cannot quite bring itself to do what is necessary.

 

Countess Almaviva (Véronique Gens)

 

 

The direction, moreover, veers between excessive activity – not quite hyperactivity: that might be too much hard work – and people haplessly standing around. A servant extra might walk in but to no apparent end and then – well, just walk out again. Meanwhile, someone else will be in entirely the wrong place, making a nonsense – and certainly not in a questioning, let alone deconstructionist way – of libretto, score, logic, anything really. Something appears, for instance a kneeler for the Countess in front of one of the many pictures (more on which soon, this from the Crucifixion), has one think it might actually have something to say, then no sooner has she knelt down, she gets back up and nothing more is said or done with it. The prospect of the Countess seeking her salvation in the Church is an intriguing one, but it is certainly not explored here.

 

Perhaps the worst of Martinoty’s many lapses – he manages somehow to combine the reactionary qualities and general intellectual vacuity of Franco Zeffirelli with the downright incompetence in stagecraft of Katharina Wagner – lies with his ‘treatment’ of Cherubino and the chair during the first act. He is not there. The Count reveals all, or rather does not, because he cannot. A little while later, once music and words have moved on, someone else – Don Basilio, I think – finds him in what I think might have been a linen chest. We see nothing for a while, owing to its placing on stage, and then eventually Cherubino steps out, long after we, or even the characters onstage, have ceased to care. If this were an attempt to play with, even to confound, expectation, it fell flatter than a pancake.

 

Then there are the weird stage designs. Well, the paintings: there is little else on which to comment. Lots of them, randomly assembled, often but not always still lives, come and go. At random points, they come down from the ceiling; at random points, they go back up. They either bear no discernible relation to the action, or add nothing to it. Why on earth, for instance, is a selection of cheeses suddenly brought before us at the beginning of the fourth act, and why does it equally suddenly disappear? Answers on a Pythonesque postcard, please.

 

Enough! I do not intend to dwell on the musical performances, since they were not given a chance. However, I must say something. It is difficult to know what to say about James Gaffigan; maybe he was hamstrung by the staging. There was nothing especially wrong with his direction of the orchestra, which at its best could sound gorgeous, but had a surprising tendency towards thinness at times. I could not see the pit, but suspect that, in a house of this size, a few more strings would not have gone amiss. There was a tendency towards (over-)swift tempi, but less than we have had to endure from much of the ‘authenticke’ brigade. He made the same gross miscalculation I recall Sir Charles Mackerras – a bewilderingly overrated Mozart conductor – making when Susanna emerged from the cupboard, needless to say a bit late, in the second act. No wonder here: instead an absurdly fast tempo, doubtless born of ‘performance practice’ dogma, which made it sound as if a horse were released to canter around the paddock.

Susanna (Aida Garifullina) and Figaro
(Alessio Arduini)

 

 

The finest vocal performance came from Adam Plachetka as the Count: all heading, it seemed, towards the emotional turmoil and fury of his third-act aria, and all flowing from that thereafter. As alert as the production would permit to his character and its development, this was something one could, in the circumstances, still just about savour. Véronique Gens sang beautifully as the Countess but her voice sometimes seemed a little small for the house. I did not especially care for the ornamentation of her third-act aria, but tastes differ in that respect; if it is to be done, then I doubt it could have been done better than here. Aida Garifullina and Alessio Arduini were an attractive servant pair: visually and often vocally, but they struggled, again perhaps in part from relative smallness of voice, but above all on account of the production, to burn their characters into our affection. Arduini's easy way with the text, though, was indicative of something more, which would doubtless have been more fully realised in another situation. We know Figaro and Susanna, and all the rest so well: none of them fully came into being on this occasion. Elena Maximova and Ulrike Helzel both seemed at times ill at ease with the vocal demands placed upon them; Dan Paul Dumitrescu was an excessively bluff Don Bartolo. However, with a staging such as this, the singers should not necessarily be held responsible.

 

Happy Birthday, Helmut! On Lachenmann's Eightieth Birthday

The composer in conversation with Michael Gielen, followed by Gielen's performance of Fassade with the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, of late, intensely lamented memory:

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

Porgy & Bess, Vienna

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Hadelich/Tonkünstler-Orch./Yamada - Haydn, Adès, and Mendelssohn, 24 November 2015

Musikverein, Vienna

Haydn – Violin Concerto in C major, Hob.VIIa/1

Thomas Adès – Concentric Paths
Mendelssohn – Symphony no.3 in A minor, 'Scottish', op.56

Augustin Hadelich (violin)
Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich
Kazuki Yamada (conductor)

This was, as ‘they’ say, a concert of two halves: two violin concertos in the first, in truly excellent performances by Augustin Hadelich; a symphony in the second, let down by uncomprehending conducting by Kazuki Yamada. Unifying the two halves was the splendid, dark-hued, ‘old German’ playing of the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra. It had been far too long since I had heard them – three years ago, in fact, in a wonderful Mahler Second – but it was a delight to hear them once again, aided of course by the fabled warmth of the Musikverein acoustic.

 

Let me get the Mendelssohn out of the way: a real pity, given the depth of bass tone we heard from the orchestra. The first movement benefited from a beautifully grave opening, which really seemed to be leading somewhere. Alas, there was far less of a sense to that in the ensuing Allegro poco agitato, which, under Yamada, progressed only sectionally, with little impression of an overarching line, let alone of the dynamism inherent in Mendelssohn’s form. The scherzo is marked Vivace non troppo; not only did Yamada disregard ‘non troppo’ but he substituted Presto. His podium dancing was eye-catching, if unfortunate. The great Adagio, beautifully dark in orchestral colour, again proceeded fitfully, bar by bar. Gravity came through by virtue of the playing, but the conductor needed to make the music sound more at ease with itself. A hard-driven finale made me long to hear the same orchestra play the symphony with another conductor.

 

In retrospect, it became even more clear that the Haydn C major Concerto had been the soloist’s interpretation. Cultivated playing from both Hadelich and the orchestra was a joy from beginning to end: such a delightful change from the world of ‘authenticke’ grotesquerie some curious souls claim to favour in Classical music. In the first movement, everything simply sounded ‘right’: the tempo, rhythm, phrasing, articulation, harmonic motion, and so forth. Hadelich’s double-stopping was despatched with just as much beauty as his more lyrical lines, likewise his cadenza. The slow movement breathed air similar to, although not quite identical to, Mozart’s Salzburg. Lovely orchestral pizzicato heightened the resemblance: delightful! The finale was lively without that wearying need some soloists show to scream ‘high octane’. Most important, it was true to the work’s – and the performance’s – character; it acted as a finale.

I have often felt ambivalent about Thomas Ades’s music, but gained a much stronger impression from this work for violin and concerto, Concentric Paths. Although in the ‘traditional’ three movements, there was nothing Classical about their respective weighting, the second, ‘Paths’, clearly the weightiest as well as the longest. The striking, circling (?) opening put me in mind of a composer wanting – fair enough – to have his quasi-minimalist or indeed his quasi-modernist cake and eat it. As the concerns of this first movement, ‘Rings’, came more clearly into focus, I was often put in mind, not unpleasingly, of Prokofiev. Hadelich’s cleanness of tone was just as striking, however high-lying his part – and sometimes it is very high indeed. Frustrated and sometimes non-frustrated lyricism were often apparent, the intensity of dialogue between the soloist and other soloists from within the orchestra – taking up figures from each other, developing them – a particular joy. Shards, gestures, fragments and more of melodies: the second movement opened as if one were hearing only part of a greater whole, which again seemed to come into focus, and with a particularly strong sense of drama. The tuba, perhaps inevitably, put me in mind of Fafner – but Fafner with a sense of decidedly non-Wagnerian irony. Again, Prokofiev did not seem so very far away at times. Disjuncture of meter offer a decidedly irregular – in more than one sense – basis and/or topping to the third movement, ‘Rounds’. A Prokofiev-like combination of lyricism and the mechanistic is engendered with decidedly more (post-)modernistic means – and that, too, was how it sounded in performance.

VPO/Shani - Bach and Mahler, 23 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Musikverein

Bach – Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, BWV 1052

Mahler – Symphony no.1 in D major

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (piano/conductor)

 

What a refreshing change to hear a Bach keyboard concerto not only played on the piano, but by someone who did not sound ashamed of the instrument! In the performance of Bach’s D minor concerto, one needed to make no allowances for Lahav Shani making his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic; this would have been a fine concert from anyone. The orchestra was small – for the Bach, that is – at 6.6.5.4.3, although doubtless enormous enough for the ayatollahs of ‘authenticity’ to order exemplary punishment. Shani took the first movement faster than I had heard before, but without it sounding in the least garbled or harried. Demisemiquavers remained melodic, likewise trills: never mere effect. There was always clear understanding of relative melodic weight within groups, as there was from the Vienna strings, similarly of the work’s greater contours. The Adagio was taken rightly in slow triple time, unmistakeably triple, unmistakeably an Adagio. (If that sounds tautologous, tell that to the zealots!) Shani again proved his own man, the tone of his cantilena noble, almost defiant, always underpinned by the bass. He can certainly spin a long line without detriment to the chiaroscuro. There was a broadly, harmonically, conceived ritardando at the end, which, being harmonically conceived, was not in the slightest excessive. The finale was again fast, but not too fast. Shani’s piano cut nicely through the strings. A duet with solo cello brought a nice element of variation, whilst the light and shade in the piano part was such as one might hear in an excellent performance of Schumann, but hears far too rarely today in Bach.

There was, needless to say, a larger body of strings for Mahler’s First Symphony. From my seat in the right hand-side of the balcony, I could not see the whole orchestra, but there were sixteen first violins, going down to eight double basses (in VPO style, along the back of the orchestra), firsts and seconds split to left and right of the conductor. Shani conducted the work from memory; he is, apparently, about to conduct it in Birmingham with the CBSO. One would expect the Vienna Philharmonic violins to sail through the stiff test of those opening harmonics; it nevertheless remains a stiff test and is always worthy of praise when passed. Shani’s performance was anything but an identikit performance. Again, he proved his own man, but differences from tradition/Schlamperei never sounded different for their own sake; they could always be justified within his conception. During the long introduction to the first movement, a growling bass line, at an unusually – convincingly – slow tempo, had the woodwind sound unusually – convincingly – uneasy above. The contrast with spring-like gambolling thereafter, with wonderfully sweet string playing, was clear, but so too was kinship, calling into question that contrast; Mahler’s playing with sonata form expectations was clearly both understood and communicated, harmonic tension screwed up nicely. The symphony’s Wayfarer roots were clear, but so was their transformation. Moments and passages of unease sounded, not through undue grotesquerie, but through their roots in and deviation from German Romanticism. And when the dam finally burst, there was some magnificent orchestral swagger, perhaps most notably from the Vienna horns, but not just from them. I was a little uncertain about the somewhat throwaway ending, but again, Shani was clearly not hidebound by Schlamperei.

 

It was good to hear the strings really dig in for the Ländler to follow. Here, numbers counted, but still more so did rhythm and its relationship to harmony. Shani clearly, like his mentor, Daniel Barenboim, has a fine ear for harmony and its implications. Beethoven is a sterner test again, but I should be interested to hear what he has to say there. The bass line again proved the root of much questioning. A tender horn call – the German, weich, so often seems the mot juste in such a context – ushering in the Trio, seemed momentarily to look into the future, as far, perhaps as the Seventh Symphony, reminding us that the undeniable charm of the new material was not to be taken without a good dose of irony. The return of the initial material had it thereby sound quite transformed, the showmanship of the conclusion growing out of it rather than imposed upon it.

 

Ghostly kettledrums, taking Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream somewhere it never wanted to go, began their dance of death with solo double-bass. (Thank goodness there was none of that nonsense of employing the entire section, an absurdity for which Sander Wilkens, editor of the so-called critical edition, should hang his head in shame!)  The canon gathered momentum just as it should: with a fragility that proved both real and deceptive. Pyramus and Thisbe indeed! And the Klezmer music was equally well judged; remembered, reimagined, integrated, the tension thereby all the greater than if it sounded, as too often occurs, as if it had come from nowhere. It was sardonic, but the Romantic framing remained: both need each other. There was, moreover, a wonderful stillness thereafter, which put me in mind of the slow movement to the Fourth Symphony. Solo oboe and violin cut through that stillness with cruel beauty. And then: harp intonation of death, returning us to an eerily intensified ‘Bruder Martin’. The end, intriguingly, sounded as if it might disintegrate into the opening of Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces.

 

The opening of the finale proved quite a wake-up call. This is hardly a time for understatement, and yet, what was to come reminded us that theatrics need a harmonic foundation. A little too much of those theatrics at times? Perhaps, but there is more than one way to skin a Mahlerian cat. I, for one, rather welcomed the sense of a blinding flash, especially – and this was the key in retrospect – when the slow, cloying, knowing sweetness, honest in its desperation for a past that never was, told its own tale. If one has the Vienna Philharmonic’s strings, one might as well use them to full effect! Episodes screamed, but did not just scream; they spoke too. Moments, passages of calm, as in the preceding movement, were not just what they might initially have seemed either. This was an integrative reading, which this movement, its structure perhaps problematical unless powerfully unified in performance, cries out for – in every sense. And so, triumph, when it came, felt and indeed had been earned. I have little doubt that we shall hear more from this pianist-conductor.

 

VSO/Harding - Schumann, Scenes from Goethe's Faust, 22 November 2015

Konzerthaus, Vienna

Szenen aus Goethes Faust, WoO 3

Faust, Pater Seraphicus, Dr Marianus – Christian Gerhaher

Gretchen, Una poenitentum – Christiane Karg
Mephistopheles, Böser Geist – Alastair Miles
Marthe, Sorge, Magna Peccatrix – Christina Landshamer
Mangel, Maria Aegyptica, Mater Gloriosa – Gerhild Romberger
Noth, Mulier Samaritana – Jennifer Johnston
Schuld – Anna Huntley
Ariel, Pater Exstaticus – Andrew Staples
Pater Profundus – Franz-Josef Selig
Eine Büßerin – Elisabeth Erhenfellner
Chorus soloist – Michael Sachsenmaier

 Vienna State Opera Youth Chorus (chorus master: Johannes Mertl)

Wiener Singakademie (chorus master: Heinz Ferlesch)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

 

I have had to wait a long time to hear Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust ‘live’, since, as an undergraduate, buying a second-hand copy of Britten’s recording. Perhaps there has been a London performance since I have become a regular concert-goer; if so, I have not noticed it. Quite why is baffling. It is, by any standards, a fine work, perhaps not so ‘individual’ as the Schumann we know from the piano music and songs, although perhaps that is as much a matter of our conception of ‘individuality’ as anything else. There is certainly ‘originality’ – that most Romantic of constructs, but a construct to which we all, if we are honest and not absurdly modish, remain rightly in thrall – in much of the orchestral writing, which whatever its kinship with the work of other composers, could hardly ever, perhaps could never, have been written by anyone else. Yes, it requires a good few soloists and a chorus, but so do many other works. And if Goethe notoriously told Eckermann that Mozart would have had to compose his Faust, then Goethe was notoriously wrong about all manner of things musical.

Comparisons more odious than usual presented themselves early on, given that I had heard Bernard Haitink and the Chamber of Orchestra just two nights earlier. Nevertheless, if Daniel Harding’s brisk way with the Overture, at least initially, was not how I hear it in my head, it had its own justification, and he showed himself perfectly willing to yield, rather beautifully, for the more ‘feminine’ – forgive the gendered language, but it is surely apt in this of all cases – music. A contrast between Faust and Gretchen was clearly being set up, both in work and in performance, and yet something in common too: in typically nineteenth-century terms, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I need not labour the point by saying too  much about Robert and Clara. In any case, female voices are far from neglected as the work proceeds, Schumann almost careless in his requirements. And so, after that rather Harnoncourt-like opening, I had no quarrel, or even query, with Harding’s tempi. There was plenty of ebb and flow, and if there might sometimes have been more colour in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s response – not to mention a few too many fluffs in the brass department – there was good playing throughout, excellent in the more vigorous sections and often beguiling in the more ‘poetic’, sensitive passages. Choral singing was excellent throughout, too, both from the Wiener Singakademie, large in numbers yet lithe and lively, and from the young singers from the Opernschule der Wiener Staatsoper, winningly seraphic. The Dies irae passages properly chilled, yet without melodrama; musical values were always to the fore.

The solo singing was for me the highlight. Since he had the lion’s share of it, it is hardly surprising that I should mention Christian Gerhaher first and foremost. The beauty of his vocal delivery was matched to a tee by the acuity of his verbal response. These were clearly words that meant a great deal to him – they do, surely, to any German – but nothing was taken for granted. Gerhaher was not ‘just’ singing Goethe; he was singing Schumann’s Goethe. His shading and phrasing were such as one might have expected in a performance of Dichterliebe. There was, moreover, Faustian defiance, when called for; and drama worthy of the stage – if unstageable – in Faust’s death. Gerhaher’s roles in the Third Part were carefully differentiated; now he was one soloist among many. And those other soloists were an impressive bunch too; there was not a weak link in the cast. Christiane Karg offered a well-judged match of vocal refulgence and drama, again always founded in the text. Andrew Staples sounded every inch a Tamino in his roles, Schumann’s fantastic writing for Ariel benefiting from a meltingly Romantic evocation in vocal and instrumental terms. Alastair Miles proved a stentorian Mephistopheles, and Christina Landshamer a perky, intelligent soprano. Franz-Josef Selig sounded as his usual, beneficent self: always more than welcome. Ensemble writing was always well attended to, balances permitting Schumann’s lines to tell both contrapuntally and harmonically.

 

 

This is a work we need to hear far more often, but this was a good occasion on which to start. Like many, I really have not the slightest idea what Goethe meant by his ‘ewig-Weibliche’ panacea, and probably should rather keep it that way, but Schumann’s unexpectedly – even when one knows it – non-soaring conclusion offers, if not a solution, then, after the splendidly blazingly writing beforehand, a welcome deflection. That, moreover, was how it sounded here.

.

 

Boulez, Schoenberg - and a Womble?

Whilst reading in the newly reopened library of the Arnold Schönberg Center, I came across an entry in the catalogue, entitled ‘Boulez, Schoenberg – and a Womble?’ Needless to say, more serious pursuits had to wait. It is the eye-catching title for a behind-the-scenes report from the late Edward Greenfield on recording sessions for Moses und Aron (High Fidelity, March 1975, 25/3). The following reveals all:

 

 

Might there be, hanging around in a vault somehere, a truly ‘objective’ recording of Underground, Overground, Wombling Free, unburdened by sentimental, pseudo-Romantic accretions of 'performing tradition'?

Perahia/COE/Haitink - Schumann, 20 November 2015

Grosser Saal, Musikverein

Manfred, op.115: Overture

Piano Concerto in A minor, op.54
Symphony no.2 in C major, op.61

Murray Perahia (piano)

Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

As safe bets go, this all-Schumann programme, with these musicians, would probably have veered toward the extreme end of safe. Yet, however heightened the expectations, they were not to be disappointed by performances whose supreme musicality delighted and edified from beginning to end. The golden acoustic – it really does sound more or less as it looks, albeit without the questionable ornamentation that must have given Adolf Loos severe palpitations – of the Musikverein’s Grosser Saal did no harm either, of course, although the chattering pair of girls behind me certainly did. No number of hard stares seemed to be enough; why do these people bother going?

 

I am not sure that I have ever heard the Manfred Overture in concert before; if I have, I have forgotten the experience, which forgetfulness might well speak for itself. We rarely, if ever, hear the complete incidental music: a great pity, but then much the same can be said of a good deal of Schumann’s music. At any rate, Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe had nothing to fear from the most exalted of comparisons. Indeed, whilst the orchestra was of course smaller, though not at all too small, and Haitink’s way is not Furtwängler’s – whatever the inspiration, neither is Barenboim’s – the darkness of tone Furtwängler drew from the Berlin Philharmonic did not always sound so distant. The extraordinary drama of such a performance, sounding with no exaggeration as if everyone’s life depended on it, is doubtless unrepeatable, just as no one could or should imitate Furtwängler in the Ninth. However, if the orchestral lines did not ‘speak’ quite like that – how could they do? – there was a noticeable, parallel kinship with Wagner. Two of the very greatest of Wagner conductors, and moreover, two of the very greatest Walküre conductors, impart their different varieties of musico-dramatic eloquence to the same score. Those Neapolitan sixth chords tell so much – which might perhaps resist the attempt to put it into words – because the crucial importance of harmony and, above all, harmonic rhythm is present throughout. It is that greatest wonder of Western music, harmony, which shapes the melodic, almost verbal, contours above. We feel again the loss, Genoveva notwithstanding, of Schumann as opera composer – even if, perhaps particularly if, it could never really have been. And the playing of the COE was just as committed as the Berlin Philharmonic: whether the Freischütz-like brass, the vernal woodwind, or the strings, whose every note pulsed with life – life, which Furtwängler, in his echt-Romantic way, distinguished in his notebooks from ‘vitality’, a second order virtue, longing for something already gone. Ours is largely a secondary lot, or sometimes it seems, but without grandstanding, Haitink and the COE permitted this neglected masterpiece to shine as itself.

 

The Piano Concerto is of course, a different animal. No one could call it neglected; indeed, it is the sort of work I only really wants to hear in a great performance, since otherwise one might just as well return at home to the great recordings of the past. Well, this was a great performance of the present. If I say that the work appeared simply to speak for itself, the claim stands open to objection in any number of ways. ‘Appeared’, ‘simply’, etc. The art that conceals art is in many respects the greatest and most difficult art of all. But there was a wisdom here born not only of lengthy experience, but also surely of the renewed delight in treating again with a masterpiece: finding new things, no doubt, but also, I suspect, finding old things and letting them speak, or sing, anew. Haitink and the orchestra offered the most impeccable of balance, lines weighted as if we were hearing, say, Boulez subtly and yet unmistakeably bring to the surface a Bergian Hauptstimme. Yet beneath that surface, again, lay harmony. So too, it did with Perahia, whose renowned love for Schenker was clearly in evidence. And yet, individual lines sang with Mozartian eloquence, the eloquence of a Mozart piano concerto in which the ‘purely’ vocal has been aufgehoben. A right-hand melody, in which the shadows deepened, lifted, or perhaps in which our standpoint upon them shifted, was crafted in the most apparently ‘natural’ of ways, just as it would be from the outstanding COE woodwind. Transitions, such as that from the Intermezzo from the finale, were a model of their kind, uniting every one of those virtues listed above. Moreover, not the least virtue of the finale would be when a Brahmsian piano chord revealed through its voicing the potentialities of a future later still. Perahia is not noted as an exponent of Schoenberg; indeed, I recall an interview in which he admitted ruefully that he did not understand twelve-note music. This, however, made me long to hear Perahia, Haitink, and – why not? – the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a performance of that composer’s piano concerto. They might even give Uchida and Boulez a run for their money. Such was not, however, my final thought: that lay with the jubilation of warm, radiant, Musikverein A major: a Romantic battle had been lovingly won.

 

Haitink’s performance of the Second Symphony was to be no less distinguished. (It would by this stage have been surprising indeed, if it had.) Both of the earlier works are in many, although not all, respects ‘symphonic’ of their kind; this, however, was the ‘real thing’, as it were. What struck me – and I might have expected it, but experiencing it in the flesh can surprise one even with the unsurprising – was the structural grasp Haitink and his players displayed not only of each movement but of the symphony as a whole. That was not to paint each movement or indeed each paragraph, each phrase even, in similar shades. There was certainly diversity in unity, and vice versa, here. Again, I think of those chords from the piano concerto, with seeds not only of the future I mentioned, but also, of course, of the past, Bach in particular. Bach is, not without reason, often invoked in discussions of the first movement, but for me, Beethoven is just as important, perhaps more so. Moreover, there is kinship – I am not quite so sure that it is ‘influence’, but that is neither here nor there – with Wagner too. Such aspects were readily apparent, perhaps all the more so for the lack of underlining. Haitink, whatever he might be, is certainly not an ‘underliner’. (I imagine with horror what some of those intent on arbitrarily pulling around symphonic structures would have done with, or rather to, this.) Once again, the freshness, the exhilaration of the COE’s response was a joy in itself, not that it could or should have been heard merely ‘in itself’. The scherzo dazzled, not in a flashy way – again, can one imagine a less ‘flashy’ conductor? – but through the unleashing of kinetic, Mendelssohnian, above all profoundly musical energy. There was nothing sentimental to the slow movement, but nor was it treated in the perfunctory way that some, eager to avoid charges of sentimentality, will inflict upon it. Phrase upon phrase unfolded, almost as if in a poetry reading, until the dam broke and the high yet not un-tortured spirits of the finale flowed, like the Rhine itself. Beethoven again seemed a guiding but not an overbearing inspiration; Schumann spoke for himself.