Landmark ! Henze The Raft of the Medusa Metzmacher

A landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci.  Fifty years after its premiere, you'd expect that one of Henze's keynote works would be received with a bit more comprehension, but the complete lack of understanding exhibited by most of the press prove Henze was right.  In 1968, protesters disrupted the first public performance.  Henze could not stop the mobs, but was excoriated by the press.  Some performers, who should have known better, since the piece wass dedicated to Che Guevara) turned on Henze to save their skins.  Please read Henze's own words HERE)

Why such frenzy ?  Surely everyone knows Théodore Géricault's famous painting  of the raft, where Jean-Claude waves a red piece of cloth ?  Moreover, Géricault was painting when the wreck of the Medusa was still raw political scandal.  The rich had left the poor to die. What Géricault depicted was not lost on audiences at the time. The real horror is that modern audiences refuse to connect, even though we're surrounded by images or war, destruction and refugees drowing at sea.  Even if the press don't know Henze, which is bad enough, surely some might have the humanity to think ?  Traumatized after the debacle of the premiere, Henze wrote Versuch über Schweine a heartfelt scream of agony which  is even more valid now than it was then. 

Henze's The Raft of the Medusa was a political oratorio, hence its structure, which draws from Greek tragedy and also from Henze's hero, Benjamin Britten  (think Curlew River and The Rape of Lucretia).  This determines Castellucci's abstract staging . He knows the composer and the music better than his detractors do. This is a drama of ideas, not realism, and certainly not light entertainment.  In the Prologue, the facts, as known, are recited with the dry impartiality of a news reader. The narrator is Charon who, in Greek mythology, ferries the dead across the River Styx into the underworld.  That's why he's seen on a blank stage, holding an oar, or pulling what appears to be a string of light, which later appears in abstract forms at certain points in the production. As Charon, Dale Duesing's spoken German isn't perfect, but that doesn't matter.  He speaks with authority and the wisdom of one who has seen all too much suffering.  His musical instincts bring out the music in the Sprechstimme passages, where his delivery is crisp and incisive.  This is a drama where era and place don't count.  The French ship was wrecked off the coast off Senegal, then a French colony.  Now, millions risk death to escape to the west.  Castellucci is wise not to make  the connectioins too specific.  It's enough that we see a video of an African swimming, endlessly, in a vast ocean.  We can identify with him as Everyman, struggling in an alien and hostile environment.  

Charon describes the stage directions, but we don't need to see them literally.  Hearing disembodied voices call from the darkness is much more effective than clumsy movement on stage.  In any case, we can hear the change of balance as the "dead" grow louder and more dominant, and the "living" fade.  If we pay attention to the music, we can also hear the shift between winds (operated by human breath) to strings, something played with more wood than string.  Henze's gift for writing for mixed voices builds the choral lines with sensitivity : high male voices and even higher female voices swirl against deeper timbres.  We hear individual names, and use our imagination.  Images of the waves, and half-glimpsed faces further serve to focus attention on the drama in the music itself.  

And what music this is !  Haunting textures, swirling and surging, like the ocean, rumbling undercurrents, passages where woodwinds fly brightly, suggesting light, hope, the freedom of seabirds.  Henze himself conducted in 1968. Since the recording is based only on the reherasal, we really can't tell what it might have sounded like if the piece had time to breathe. Henze was too traumatized to return to it, though he made revisions in 1990.  Metzmacher is thus conducting Henze's last words, so to speak, and from the perspective of long experience. Often, a good interpreter has more perspective than a composer. Henze was a good conductor and would have appreciated Metzmacher's perceptive approach.

One of the striking things about The Raft of the Medusa is the way Henze portrays the passage of time.  Nights turn to day, hours drift by, and still the raft floats on a featureless horizon. The white lights in the production form as a horizontal line, suggesting the raft, teetering dangerously up and down on the waves, going nowhere. On the raft, the peoiple are confined, without resources, and gradually die. Individual bodies are seen, falling into the darkness.  Henze breaks the relentless monotony with the music. A woodwind solo fleetingly suggests hope, choral lines stretch, as if reaching into the distance.  The density in the orchestration  serves to evoke the teeming life and variety in the ocean and the world beyond, intensifying the contrast between life and death, and the helplessness of the shipwrecked people. 

Henze concentrates his focus on one character, the mulatto slave Jean-Claude, who in Géricault's painting stands at the apex of the human pyramid on the raft, a subtle but pointed comment on the social pecking order, even in Géricault's time. While others succumb, Jean-Claude holds the red piece of fabric, in  the hope that it will be seen by rescuers.  And then he dies. When Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang the part in 1968, the nobility of his delivery brought Christ-like pathos, which is fair enough, given that Jean-Claude sacrifices himself for his fellow man.  But Christ isn't the only one to have done so : ordinary people do extraordinary things more often than we realize. Jean-Claude isn't necessarily Jesus,  so Bo Skovhus's portrayal is probably much closer to Henze and to the secular, political character of the piece.  Skovhus expresses the human side of Jean-Claude, who has probably suffered his whole life through, but doesn't give up, even if it means his last breath. Skovhus's delivery is authoritative without being over-elaborate. On a raft, adrift, being high status doesn't get you anywhere.  Skovhus's Jean-Claude isn't rich or heroic, but he's a good man with honest common sense, which in a venal world confers its own sanctity.  Lenneke Ruiten sang Madame La Mort, who, like the Moon, mentioned in the text and depicted in the music, is elegant but impassive.  Ruiten stands apart from proceedings, as the Moon does, but observes.  Here, she's seen in a sou'wester, as sailors wear, which is fair enough, and fits well with the maritime imagery.   All in all, an exceptional experience, a shining beacon in an ocean of non-understanding, which will advance our appreciation of Henze, as composer and humanitarian thinker.  Listen and watch Henze's The Raft of The Medusa HERE on arte.tv

 

Schreker Die Gezeichneten - Metzmacher Warlikowski

Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, easily the most rewarding full performance ever. Metzmacher gets Schreker – revealing his modernity and originality.   There are many kinds of "modern". The idea that 20th-century music can only be atonal/tonal, or dissonant /romantic, is nonsense, a notion compounded by audiences who don't actually listen, but think through preconception. Schreker was a highly original composer, very much a man attuned to the creative ferment of his time, fuelled as it was by new ideas and social change.  Die Gezeichneten flows from the same Zeitgeist that produced Freud, Expressionism, modern art and literature.  In the libretto, Schreker makes a wry dig at Puccini and Strauss, meaning, I think, Johann rather than Richard, for Die Gezeichneten has a lot in common with Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Both operas, written at the same time and premiered within a year of each other, explore the nature of creative art through a lens of morbid psychology, which is a theme which runs through much of Schreker's work.  Directed by Kryzsztof Warlikowski, this production is musically sensitive and well informed, and also connects the opera to other currents in art and society in its time. This Die Gezeichneten goes a long way to restoring Schreker's true status in cultural history.

Metzmacher conducts the Vorspiel so the surging pulse heaves, as if propelled by ocean tides.  Salvago's Elysium is an island, as isolated as the man himself, surrounded by currents beyond his control.  The moon controls tides. The image of the moon appears in the libretto, intensified by musical figures that describe darkness and flickering light.  To the Greeks, the moon symbolized Athena, the goddess of art.  For Goethe, the moon symbolized chastity, inspired by his patroness, the Duchess of Weimar.  As the Vorspeil proceeds,  we see Salvago (John Daszak) , his head covered by a bag, looking towards an orb of white light that dominates the darkened stage.  Later, when Carlotta (Catherine Nagelstad) is seduced, the orb turns red (as described in the text).

Complex dichotomies operate throughout this opera, reflecting conflicts that can never be reconciled.  Ugliness and beauty, creativity and destruction, purity and corruption: thus the churning tensions in the music.  Metzmacher isn't afraid to emphasize the contrast between lush orchestration and the savage undercurrents.  Luxury is deception. Like the grotto, beauty is delusion.  Women are violated. Lust is joyless, motivated by power, money, and something even more sinister. Carlotta succumbs, as graphically described in the text and music. Wisely, Warlikowski doesn't depict the scene, concentrating on Tamare's braggadocio and the music around it. Salvago isn't as upset by the idea of Carlotta being raped as by the realization that she might have had a part in proceedings.  We see her dressed in white, her dress back to front.  The ensemble that follows isn't a trio, because all three characters are singing at cross-purposes.  No dissonance but no harmony, either.  Wonderfully astute writing on Schreker's part and well executed in performance.

Salvago creates Elysium to please his friends, as if by creating art he can compensate for his physical ugliness. How far is he culpable when his friends misuse his grotto for evil?  Carlotta falls in love with him partly because she can see good in him, but also because she sees the potential for artistic creation of her own.  In some ways, the second act is the heart of the whole opera. Carlotta's friend paints only hands, but the hands she paints are so expressive that they can portray whole stories. Art is invention, but can reveal deeper truths.  Thus Carlotta, an artist, sees  more  in Salvago than meets the eye.  Thus scene is brilliantly depicted, with imagination and sensitivity.  A second stage appears behind the singers. At first we see what appears to be a dragonfly, which turns out to be a young girl. She has the head of a mouse.  Her family are around her, too, sometimes interacting. Humans with mouse heads. We are in Die Frau ohne Schatten territory, or rather the world of surreal symbolism that fascinated a generation familiar with Classical antiquity, discovering psychology and Jungian archetypes. Clips of silent movies appear  behind the action. Scenes from Der Golem, and Frankenstein, where a "monster" shows tenderness to a little girl, then scenes from The Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu where the "monster" isn't benign.  Thus Warlikowski makes connections between Die Gezeichneten and other Schreker operas, with other cultural memes which confront sexuality and fear.
 
Warlikowski doesn't need to show Carlotta with paintbrush and easel.  Her painting exists in her soul.  Does she love her creation more than reality?  Why does he pull back, paralyzed with inhibition, when his wildest dreams come true as she declares her love ? Why does she, too, pull back on the eve of their wedding ? Does she intuit that their relationship will be sterile due to his inhibitions ? Does she respond to Tamaro because he's sexual, or because he has the courage Salvago lacks?  Christopher Maltman, as Tamaro, is a hunk. Salvago lives in his head, while Tamaro lives in his body. He doesn't like mirrors because they make him face himself.  But can he escape? Warlikowski's staging (sets by Malgorzala Szczesniak) hints as what is not said.  Mirrors, often distorted, appear now and again, sometimes as physical mirrors, sometimes as subsidiary characters like Mattuccia (Heike Grotzinger) and Pietro (Dean Power), usually roles so small they don't get attention, but which exist for a reason. Salvago isn't the only person trapped in games in the guise of service to others.  A wonderful touch - Metzmacher himself is glimpsed on stage from time to time, reflected in the mirrors.
 
In this production, Salvago's spoken monologue is included, which makes a difference  since it shows how he reflects on his own condition though he can't break out of it.  Though he  didn't rape women, he is morally culpable by making the violence possible,. Extremely moving, especially since Daszak delivered it with great dignity.

Schreker writes an angelus into the music before the party.  Angels appear on stage, but angels dressed in nude suits.  They (male and female) are supposed to resemble showgirls but they dance so deftly en pointe that they're clearly ballet dancers with great technique.  The wedding guests are prissy: they don't like nakedness but sex is all around.  Later a voluptuous stripper bumps and grinds beside Salvago, who doesn't notice.  Either he's too uptight or he can't see the beauty beneath her poundage.  Eventually, like so many others before her in this production, she ends up inert, in a display case, unused.

At the end, Tamare sings about a village fiddler gone mad because  the girl he loved found another man. This is a reference to a medieval legend, which pops up often in German literature and song.  Salvago asks for his cap and bells. Has he gone mad, or are he and Tamare re-enacting an old saga ?? There are so many levels in Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, skilfully blended together,  Warlikowski's silent movie clips and business suits extend what is already in the opera, though  few productions come as close to its true spirit.  Altogether, the finest Die Gezeichneten that I can imagine, full of detail and sensitive to music and meaning.  Bayerische Staatsoper productions don't usually make it to DVD, but the audio recording to get is  the one on right HERE. Lothar Zagrosek, DSO Berlin from the Decca Entartete Musik series, which is the benchmark reference. Outstanding, and even Matthias Goerne (aged 26) in a minor role.

Please see my other articles on Schreker, Braunfels and others (including Strauss), and on silent film and Weimar.

Metzmacher Elbphilharmonie K A Hartmann Shostakovich

At the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg,  Ingo Metzmacher conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme that might have seemed innocent when it was planned but nowe is disturbingly prescient: Karl Amadeus Hartmann Symphony no 1 "Versuch eines Requiem" with Shostakovich Symphony no 11 "The year 1905", both completed at the height of the Cold War, but with very different perspectives.

The Elbphilhamonie broadcast this concert internationally, online, a harbinger of good things to come. Hamburg invested heavily in the project, realizing that its potential is far greater than for the city alone. While the Philharmonie Berlin is primarily a home for the Berliner Philharmoniker (though other orchestras use it), the Elbphilharmonie could be a game changer, affecting the whole demographic of the business.

This concert also showcased the hall's superb acoustic (read more here).  Anton Webern's Sechs Stücke für grosses Orchester op. 6 (1909) opened the concert. A large orchestra is needed, not for volume, but for extended palette.  Webern sought to express "Klangfarbenmelodie": myriad details of colour and tonality.  Hence the markings "sehr langsam", and "sehr mäßig", unhurried traverses that let the music unfold, revealing subtle shading.  Metzmacher's tempi were by no means slow, but meticulously well judged.  I hardly dared breathe lest the spell be broken. Exquisite playing: a single chord on  harp, muffled drumstrokes, a triplet on bassoon, all perfectly in place and in cohesion. The Viennese are taken for granted in standard repertoire, but here they were revealed as infinitely better musicians than popular cliché might suggest.  On the wide platform of the Elbphilharmonie, there's a lot of space between players, so they're not constrained by being cramped together. They can probably listen to each other for one thing. Sound moves ambiently with this extra "breathing space", quite a distinctive feature of this new auditorium. 

Gerhild Romberger photo Rosa Frank, Vienna Philharmonic

Ingo Metzmacher is the conductor of choice when it comes to K A Hartmann. He's recorded the complete symphonies and with such insight that it's essential listening for anyone interested, not just in Hartmann but also in his period.  Hartmann began this piece in 1936 as a response to the increasing madness of the Third Reich. The first movement is a miserere based on the poem I Sit and Look Out by Walt Whitman. "I sit and look out. upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame"  – men and women suffering, domestically and in war, and tyranny, a famine at sea where sailors cast lots as to who should be killed and eaten that the others might live a little longer.  Yet perhaps the true horror is that the poet can observe but not act. " I sitting, look out upon,/ See, hear, and am silent."  The soloist was Gerhild Romberger, whose powerful, dark timbre articulated suppressed anguish. She's one of the most interesting in her Fach, since she also conveys tenderness and sympathy.  In 2014 I heard her sing O Mensch in Mahler's Symphony no 3 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra,  truly plaintive, as if she were weeping for the death of the old world and giving birth to the new. Hartmann doesn't set every word in the poem, but his orchestration leaves us in no doubt what's happening. An explosive introduction, a fusillade of trumpets, trombone and percussion: horrors intruding on the isolation of the solo voice.

The second movement "Frühling" references Whitman's When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, mourning the assassination of Lincoln and the American Civil War, but the text is oblique, using the image of a falling star to express the idea of loss.  Hartmann's setting is even less wordy, avoiding Whitman's syntax, which is even trickier in German.  Despite the barrage of sound in the introduction and background, what stands out is the passage where the piano plays quietly, its fragile memory evolving into "starlight" in the strings and winds, the wavering line then taken up by soprano trumpets.  Violin and cello dialogue in the opening theme of the third movement, the piano mediating between them. Gradually, other sections in the orchestra join in – oboes, bassoons and tuba and the strings in succession. The tam tam crashes : reminding us that this relative harmony cannot last.

"Tränen " sings Romberger three times, reflecting the first line of Whitman's Tears.  "O, Wer ist dieser Geist?" she cries, and an apparition materializes in the orchestra, brass blaring, strings screaming, timpani crashing. Romberger's lines growling at the bottom of her register, rise suddenly to the top: she isn't fazed, but totally in control. Again, a quiet passage on piano introduces an unearthly mood. "O, Schatten!" sings Romberger with tenderness.  The shade seems stilled in the light of day.  Metzmacher shapes the long orchestral lines so they pulsate with ominous menace,  gathering strength to strike again.  The night falls. Romberger sings "Tränen", as if falling into hypnosis.  Muted bassoons  then screaming chords of alarm.

Muffled snare drums introduce the Epilogue, a prayer "Bitte", and a return to the apocalyptic traumas of the first movement.  Here the text comes from Whitman's Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, where Mother Earth looks upon corpses in the battlefield. No Valkyries, no Valhalla.  The vocal line is intoned, not lyrical, Sprechstimme, not song.  Then, suddenly, Romberger unleashes her full mezzo power. in a long wail of protest.  Her line becomes incantational again.  "O meiner Toten" she sings. Relentless, repeating figures in the orchestra, then a cataclysmic explosion, the echoes of which carry on into silence. I've written about Hartmann many times – search this site – because in so many ways he's more than "just" a composer but a prophet who intuited the trauma of existence and realized that music is can express human decency even in the presence of evil.  His Symphony no 1 (completed in 1955 towards the end of a long career) bears the subtitle "Versuch eines Requiem", towards a Requiem because the horrors aren't over, and may yet get worse than we can possibly imagine.  No time yet for the resolution of a requiem.  Much respect to Metzmacher, who knows Hartmann's music so well and why it is vitally important. Congratulations too, to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elbphilhamonie for having the courage to do this piece when feel-good superficiality might be more popular.

Hartmann's Symphony no 1 and Shostakovich's Symphony no 11 were completed at about the same time in the mid 1950's, but the two pieces are radically different.  While Shostakovich had to be careful not to annoy the Soviets, he was a public figure, unlike the far more uncompromising Galina Ustvolskaya, who had to play along with the regime to survive. His Symphony no 11 is a public piece, which won him  the Lenin Prize and great popularity.  The subject matter is unashamedly patriotic, commemorating the year 1905 and the December Revolution which was suppressed but entered the political mythology of that Soviet State. There's nothing in principle wrong with propaganda music, but much of the appeal of this symphony lies in the way it plays on emotions to whip up excitement,  and the avoidance of doubt.  Metzmacher and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gave a suitably magnificent account, so vivid and full of drama that you could forget that, at heart, this is cinema music as opposed to, say, reflective art.   Is it a soundtrack to an invisible movie? Perhaps we're supposed to suspend judgement and thrill to the images of violence and turbulence.  But where do such feelings lead? After hearing Hartmann, it's not so easy to blank things out. 

Eunuch Shostakovich The Nose, Royal Opera House

In  DmitriyShostakovich The Nose at the Royal Opera House, London, it wasn't just Kovalov's nose that got cut.  This production was a mutilation, The Nose as Eunuch, the opera stripped of its vital, creative essence.  In Gogol's original story, Kovalov is a "collegiate assessor", a petty bureaucrat who passes judgement, based on surface values. His Nose, however, has other ideas and runs away, taking on a life of its own, more adventurously led than its supposed owner's.   The nose of a person's face defines their outward appearance.  Kovalov's nose shows him up for what he is, or isn't.  And, by extension, the whole social order.  The Nose is not comedy, it's savage satire. Miss that and miss its fundamental, pungent purpose. No excuses. Shostakovich is hardly an unknown composer. Moreover, The Nose,was created at a time of exceptional artistic freedom in the early years of the Revolution, when the Soviet dream represented ideals and progressive change. Futurism, expressionism, modernity, Eisenstein, Bulgakov, Mayakovsky.  Shostakovich was only 20 when the piece was written, still full of courage and hope. But even those who don't know the background have only to pay attention to the music to get it.

Shostakovich's score explodes with inventiveness and zany experiment.  It begins with a fanfare and the roll of drums, like Grand Opera, but opens onto mundane scenes in mundane lives.  David Pountney's translation respects the image of smell. Something's off , rotting perhaps, even though we can't see it.  Despite the exuberant scoring  deliberately more circus than High Art, The Nose parodies the rich tradition of Russian opera. There's relatively little singing, and what there is is shrill and distorted, closer to Sprechstimme than to aria.  Significantly, some of the best music for voice lies in the choruses, who represent the "ordinary" masses, and in the vignettes for subsidiary characters, all of them characterized with great gusto.  The Nose may also be the Royal Opera House's tribute to John Tomlinson, who will never sing again but can still hold an audience spellbound by his incisive acting in multiple roles, a good foil for Martin Winkler's Kovalov, whose  identity remains constant throughout proceedings. Part of this story is about Kovalov's supine personality, in contrast to the vivacious spontaneity of his Nose, who doesn't give a stuff about propriety and the right way to do things.  Winkler's a good singer, which made his performance piquant.  The innate authority in Winkler's voice suggested that there might, somehow, be depth in Kovalov, if only he wasn't so repressed.  The vignettes were also well performed : honours to the ever popular Wolfgang Ablingrer-Sperrhacke, but also to the sturdy regulars of the ROH company, without whom the ROH would not be what is is.  The choruses, needless to say, were superb.

The extremes in Shostakovich's score should also alert any listener to the true nature of the piece.  The famous Percussion interlude pounded violently: it might suggest Kovalov's approaching nightmare, or perhaps the tension the Nose feels as it's about to break way.  Words would be superfluous. This isn't "comfort listening". Ingo Metzmacher's conducting was idiomatic and utterly expressive. The angular, jagged edges in this music are absolutely part of the meaning of this opera, as are the bluesy distortions, especially in the brass, where the lines of convention are eroded. Horns  and trumpets blowing raspberries, just as The Nose treats Kovalov with jaunty irreverence.  Wonderful playing from the Royal Opera House orchestra, who sounded as though they were having a wonderful time, escaping, like The Nose, from standard repertoire.  Shostakovich's instrumentation is deliberately bizarre. Famously, he employed a Flexatone, a kind of whirring saw whose wailing timbre suits the craziness in the plot. He also uses a xylophone, a balalaika, a whistle and castanets, and weaves these in well with the rest of the orchestra. The high woodwinds, for example, chuckle and chatter in frantic staccato, the strings scream. This manic instrumentation reflects the plot, too, in its depiction of the variety and diversity of life beyond Kovalov's narrow horizons.

Wild as the music is, it would be a mistake to assume that undisciplined playing would be in order. Quite the contrary.  Metzmacher pulls the wildness together so the colours stay vivid, and the players operate in relationship to each other. Again, this precision reflects the dance element in the opera, so very much a fundamental to its meaning.  The Nose was created for the Mariinsky and its excellent corps de ballet.  Dancers can't do free for all, or they'd collapse in an unco-ordinated heap. The tightness of Metzmacher's conducting gave them firm support so they could do their artistic thing, knowing they could rely on the pulse in the orchestra. Absolutely fabulous choreography (Otto Pichler) and wonderfully executed dancing from the members of the Royal Ballet.  Who can forget the chorus line of high-kicking Noses. The Nose itself was Ilan Galkoff.  For me, the high point was the ensemble of Eunuchs, a flamboyant drag act.  I loved their physicality: the animal energy in those limbs expressing the freedom the Nose represents!

Wonderful performances all round: the Royal Opera House at its best.  The disappointment, though, was the banality of the staging,directed by Barry Kosky. Presenting Shostakovich, and especially The Nose as feelgood West End Song and Dance Act is a travesty, a total denial of everything the piece stands for.  Kosky is popular because he gives punters what they want, nice things to look at without engaging their minds.  Obviously there's a market for that, but it's a betrayal of The Nose and everything it stands for.  The Nose isn't specifically Russian or Soviet, though those elements are relevant, but its primary focus is on the way society operates through group think , based on shallow surface appearances.  So what do we get ? A Nose dedicated to unquestioning superficiality.  All those wonderful individual performances but built on the dead heart of a clueless concept.  Audiences  assume Regie means costumes, and updating, but what it really means is whether the visuals contribute to the expression of meaning. Kosky's The Nose is bad Regie because it ignores the basic ideas behind the opera, its music and its composer.  We live in times when artistic integrity doesn't count for much and mob populism rules.  So a lot more is at stake than just opera.  All directors have their signatures, just like conductors and singers make an individual stamp.  Kosky's reminds me of Tracey Emin's unmade bed.  Wildly popular, but who needs the whiff of stale emissions and sordid self obsession?  We've all "been there" but most of us grow up and  do other things. But the punters like it, so it must be art.  That is why, for me, Eunuch The Nose was a deal breaker.

Luigi Nono Prometeo Metzmacher Paris stream

Ingo Metzmacher conducts Luigi Nono's Prometeo: Tragedia dell'ascolto (1984)  live from the Philharmonie Paris, available for a while on France Musique HERE.  Absolutely worth listening, and repeat listening, because this perfomance beats the 2007 recording (Peter Hirsch) which everyone has. Altogether more intense, more electrifying.  Ensemble Recherche is the main orchestra (of 11 separate ensembles, some large, some small) here with Metzmacher (as with Hirsch), but this time they sound even better. Perhaps it's Metzmacher, perhaps it's greater experience gained with time, and very probably  the wonderful acoustic of the new Philharmonie, which allows a unique integration of all the different sounds and levels in the piece.

Nono conceived Prometeo for performance at the Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice, pictured above, which has now been in disrepair for many years. At the first performance, the orchestras sat on specially built structures, designed by Rienzo Piano, (pic at right) which hovered in space. One of the musicians who played in that first performance said the structure added to the sense of danger and impermanence so integral to the piece.  I've heard Prometeo live only once, at the Royal Festival Hall, London,  in 2008, conducted by Diego Masson with the London Sinfonietta. A great experience, but acoustically dead at the RFH.  Here is what I wrote then.

This Paris Prometeo really is something else!  Metzmacher, who was the second conductor when it was performed in 1988 in Nono's presence,  says "Prometeo is not a normal piece....it's a kind of voyage, maybe on water, there are no landmarks. Nono said, "to wake up the ear is to wake up the human being'"  Listen to Metzmacher below:

Berliner Philharmoniker goes American Charles Ives 4

Gershwin, Antheil, Charles Ives and Bernstein - an all-American programme, but with a twist. Often programmes like this make me cringe because they're done with self-conscious folksiness. But Ingo Metzmacher conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker with wry, distinctive style. Each piece stands on its own merits; no special pleading needed. Even Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story sounds fresh, the tunes integrated into the overall musical logic. That's saying something!

If Bernstein is the over-exposed "face" of American music, George Gershwin and George Antheil don't get the respect they deserve. Gershwin's 1932 Cuban Overture isn't his greatest work but it's an attempt to use Cuban rhythms in "mainstream" music. What fun it is to see the august players of the Berliner Philharmoniker play bongos, maracas and rhythm sticks! Cuban music aficionados will probably cringe, but the point is made. Even with Gershwin, Cuban doesn't go gringo.

George Antheil's Jazz Symphony (1955 version) is musically a better proposition, and the Berliners give a vigorous account. I prefer the spikier 1925 version, (excellent recording by Ensemble Modern) but Antheil's later, larger orchestration reflects the period in which it was revived. It's apposite, however, in the context of the Bernstein suite. Even at the end of his life, after a long career in Hollywood, Antheil still understood what jazz is. The Berliners did it with style - wildly bluesy trumpet, louche piano, the orchestra deliciously decadent and witty.

Charles Ives's Symphony no 4 was by far the best part of the programme. Metzmacher appeared to be the only conductor, though a second conductor was present.  But much of the leadership came from Pierre-Laurent Aimard who has played the symphony many times. His Ives is idomatic in the sense that he's played all of Ives's music for piano, but his structural clarity doesn't go down well with those who want their Ives "traditional". Too bad, I think. Ives was writing serious music, not retro. A supremely professional exponent like Aimard would have been beyond Ives's wildest dreams.

The beauty of Ives's work, for me, is the way he blends popular culture into sophisticated music. The hymns, songs and marches  shouldn't over-dominate for they are snatches of memory in a much more complex musical conception. Aimard took control from the first bars of the Maestoso, dominant dark chords making a firm statement A single cello responds, and then the choir, singing brief snatches of the hymns whose origins Ives knew so well. Metzmacher conducted so a sense of contemplative silence prevailed, much more in keeping with the mood of the songs than the uncharacteristically muted diction of the Ernst Senff Choir.

The Allegretto is a strange beast, with multiple cross-currents. It's notoriously difficult to conduct, but Metzmacher understands 20th century music so well that he can show how Ives was way ahead of his time. Ives breaks the orchestra into components, playing at different tempi: individual cells operating within a larger mechanism. Aimard leads. playing faster and faster almost to the point that the strings can't keep up. This tension underlines the strange, mechanical repeats in the music. The filming is musically sensitive: two violinists are shown bowing in a strange mechanistic ritual.  Yet the overall impact is of extreme energy, even a sense of madcap zany rebellion in the wayward rhythms. One thinks of New York, where Ives worked, its skyscrapers (even in 1918) and busy infrastructure. Years before Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ives is creating futurist concepts in music. 

Th offstage ensembles intensify this idea of multiple spheres of activity. A solo violin is heard from above the stage, adding ethereal unworldliness. The second piano plays a relatively easy melody. Their music feels symbolic, like a commentary on the main piano and orchestra below. Then all hell breaks loose. What sounds like a conventional miltary match  develops at a wacky, wayward pace. Most definitely not a march to march to, which may also be part of the underlying meaning.

Metzmacher breaks it off sharply, strengthening the contrast with the Fugue and its mixture of hymn melodies and memories. Is Ives looking back on an idealized past? Ives's father fought in the Civil War and played the games required of patriotic veterans, but from what we know of his life, he wasn't happy or fulfilled. Ives strongly identified wth his father, the black sheep of the family.  Can these references to nostalgia be as simple as they seem? The trombone plays a reference to "Taps", played at the close of day, but also to mark the death of soldiers.

Percussion mark the start of the Finale, suggesting a procession or march. Metzmacher and the Berliners take this so quietly that the mood seems ominous, even though the strings soar in more conventional unison. Aimard reinforces the darkness, firm, assertive playing and absolute precision. Again, Ives contrasts mass with individual. A single violin plays  a slow, gracious figure which contradicts the gloom. Mysterious swaying sounds in the main orchestra, gradually building to a strange climax and retreats. Out of this almost nothingness Aimard plays passages so beautiful that they seem magical. The hazy diction of the choir worked musically, for me, because it put greater emphasis on piano and orchestra than on the literal meaning of the words. That, perhaps, is Metzmacher's achievement. Ives's Fourth Symphony is much greater than the sum of its parts. Listen to this concert on the Berliner-Philharmoniker website.

The photo shows Charles Ives in 1945 (Eugene Smith, courtesy charlesives.org) It's famous because it shows the quirkier side of Ives. Look at that crouch - is he about to spring at the photographer and catch us all unaware? 

Abbado Mahler 7 Lucerne Festival

The equivocal nature of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony makes performers respond in an individual way. It is as if Mahler is setting a challenge that will separate the creative from the conformists. In the same way, it is a challenge for listeners. Can they follow the interpretation? Can they feel what the performer is trying to express? There are no “right” answers : the challenge is in the process. As E M Forster said, “Only connect”. Sometimes when I listen to this symphony I think of Mahler with his uncompromising intellect and originality, looking at us, with a grin, whispering “Only connect”.

This is what I wrote about Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony no 7 in 2005.  It's also available on download from medici.tv.medici.tv

What then is Abbado expressing? This version has the conductor working with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, an orchestra hand picked from among the finest musicians in Europe. The great names are here - Kolja Blacher, Antonello Manacorda, Albrecht Mayer, Sabine Meyer and her Bläserensemble, members of the Hagen and Alban Berg Quartets, members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Abbado has worked with them individually and collectively many times, and they know each other well. Coming together to play is an exhilarating experience, all the more stimulating because it is a seasonal event, rather than a regular fixture. This gives the performance a wonderful blend of precision and spontaneity: these are musicians at the peak, technically, playing for the sheer enjoyment of being together and sharing their love of the music. This means Abbado can create an unusually acute, chamber-like performance.

It is the refinement and sensitivity of this interpretation that is refreshing. Abbado recorded this in May 2001 with the Berlin Philharmonic, when he was their chief conductor. That performance was assured and expansive, making the most of the Berliners feel for the grand scale. Although many of the Berlin players are on the Lucerne Orchestra too, Abbado has chosen a very different, more sophisticated approach. The famed figure on posthorn that signals the opening asserts itself, but leads naturally into the ensemble, without overly dominating. This chamber approach enhances details like the flurries in the exposition, warning, perhaps, of “night winds” to come. What is even more striking, though, is the expert precision with which these players respond to the conductor. They switch from the march theme to strings as if they were a single organism. Playing of this calibre is exciting, particularly when you appreciate just how many players are involved.

Abbado takes the march theme not as a rigid militarist march but as something crisper, and faster paced. It is less tied to 19th century reality, and becomes more abstract, more timeless. In the first Nachtmusik, the horns are exquisite, expressly like alpine horns ushering in nightfall. The movement has a duality like that between night and day, darkness and light. Yet, as in the first movement, the music moves forward to the scurrying sounds of clarinets and pizzicato strings. The swirling motifs in the Scherzo cut off with breathtaking suddenness. They deliberately unsettle any complacency. This same unsentimentality illuminates the second Nachtmusik. Serenading mandolins and guitars are typical Romantic cliché. Yet again, this orchestra lifts the movement out of the 19th century with its clean, modern sound. Lush, resonantly mysterious playing is a given, but then Abbado puts finger to mouth, indicating gradual silence. The music softens into a strange but convincing combination of understated yet precise playing.

In contrast, the Rondo Finale is even more electric. In his notes to the recording, Donald Mitchell states; “The violent, unprepared contrast is akin to parting the curtains in a dark room and finding oneself dazzled by brilliant sunlight”. It’s an ambiguous, contradictory movement, but what stands out is its powerful sense of energy. This is where a crack orchestra like this proves its worth. The precise, vivid commitment of this playing carries all with it. This is its excitement. There’s no place here for sloppy blurred playing. There is no need for the composer to resolve the ambiguities of the night, which are part of nature.

Mahler throws himself into the light as if in an act of faith. The Lucerne Orchestra explodes with sheer exhilaration. It’s glorious. Abbado shines with happiness and clutches his chest – an unconscious gesture, but one which for me was incredibly poignant. Life is fragile, but Mahler lived it fully and passionately. He wrote the equivocal Nachtmusiks before the rest of the symphony. Perhaps then the Finale is, like Urlicht in the Second Symphony, or the Finale in the Eighth, a statement of faith in life itself? I don’t know. But this performance certainly had me thinking on new lines, the sign of a truly original and thought-provoking interpretation. One day, perhaps, when audiences become more attuned to modern approaches to Mahler, the Lucerne Festival concerts will be appreciated for their role in developing Mahler performance practice.

Please also read about Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at the Proms 2010, That was wonderful, too, because Metzmacher and DSO Berlin make a virtue of the contradictions, a good flow between the contrasting moods, the crazy distortions which made people call this the "Symphony of the NIght". Plrease keep coming back to this site if you like Mahler, he's been the lodestone of my life for many years. I remember Des Knaben Wunderhorn Dietrich Fischer Dieskau/Elisabeth Schwarzkopf when it came out! But I was pretty young then.

Insightful Mahler 7 Metzmacher Prom 34

Interpretively, Mahler's Seventh Symphony is intriguing. Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at Prom 34 penetrates depths rarely accessed. If "a symphony contains the world", contradiction is fundamental. Metzmacher goes straight for the contradiction and reveals so much about the innate nature of Mahler's idiom that it bears thoughtful, careful relistening.

Of all Mahler’s symphonies, Symphony no 7 is controversial because there are many scattered clues as to its interpretation, some wildly conflicting. It 's emotionally ambivalent,  hence the variations in performance practice. This is not a symphony where “received wisdom” has any place.

The opening bars were inspired by the sound of oars, on a boat being rowed across a lake. Immediately an idea of duality is established,  bassoons paired with horns, their music echoed by strings and lighter winds. The "oars" gently give way to a slow march which will later develop in full, manic force. If the horns sounded slightly sour, this was no demerit, for distortion pervades this whole symphony, where all is heard under cover of night. Beneath the gentle surface flow disturbing undercurrents.

Metzmacher conducts with real aplomb, rather, I suspect, like Mahler did himself (see picture). He smiles, and rounds his fist in huge, expansive gestures, and the musicians  respond with richer, rounder playing.

Despite the nightmare aspects of this symphony, humour keeps breaking through.  Cowbells in a sophisticated orchestra? Perhaps Mahler is reminding us that life is about other things than being too serious. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin's cowbells are wonderfully resonant, truly Wunderhorn-like, evoking associations, either from some recess in Mahler's memory, or from his earlier works (which is why knowing Mahler's whole output assists appreciation of individual works). Yet this nostalgia is neither cosy, nor comforting. The sharp pizzicatos, dark harp chords and almost jazz-like dissonances are meant to disturb, and the DSO Berlin players do them with whip-like savagery.  This is “night music” after all, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Resolution is not going to come until the blazing end, when the work is complete.

Just as the first and last movements form an infrastructure, the core of the symphony is the scherzo Schattenhaft, literally “shadow-like”.  This is no gemütlich Viennese waltz but one which harks back to a much more ancient, and darker, concept of dance as of demonic possession. It reflects the subversive Dionysian aspects of the 3rd Symphony. The strings, of course, take pride of place. Remember Freund’ Hein, the fiddler of death, though death is by no means the only interpretation in this bipolar symphony.  Metzmacher lulls us with the gentler aspects of this music, so the eerier depths sound all the more unsettling. Just as in the best horror stories, the scariest bits are those you can’t quite identify at first.

The famous horn dialogues of Nachtmusik 1 exemplify the contrasts that run throughout this symphony. Mahler shifts from major to minor, from upfront, blazing fanfares to shadowy cowbells heard from a distance. Strident trombone calls contrast with intricate trills in the strings. In contrast, the mandolin and guitar of Nachtmusik 2 are embedded in the orchestra, so they arise even more mysteriously into the consciousness,  as if from a distance. They function much as the cowbells did before. Metzmacher makes the connection.

Thus the contrast with massed strings. But the simplicity is sympathetically reinforced by a superb solo by the orchestra's Leader (Wei Lu). The humble troubador's music is private, not meant to be heard by the slumbering masses, a "ferne Klang". The first violin, however, makes it clear how important the image is. Then the cellos pick up the concept, their deeper, more sophisticated sounds echoing the mandolin and guitar. The Rondo-finale is magnificent, but Metzmacher and his players understand the crucial human-scale pathos that runs beneath.

And what a finale Metzmacher creates! its fanfares, alarums and crashing percussion drive away the ambiguities of the Nachtmusiks like brilliant sunshine drives away the shadows of the night. Dominant major keys return. The solemn march of the first movement becomes a blitzkrieg stampeding wildly forwards. The deceptive patterns of Rondo repeats seem to contradict the forward flow, until, at the end, the trajectory surges forth again, triumphant.

This final movement is carefully scored with no less than seven ritornellos and several secondary themes. Trumpets, drums and bells normally evoke sounds of triumph, but what is really in this triumph? Not bluster, according to Metzmacher, for his Mahler isn't brutalist. Contradictions again. He keeps control of the intricate architecture even when the music explodes in exuberance. A Messiaen dawn chorus, each bird distinctly clear in the cacophony.

This turbulent, life-enhancing energy is more indicative of Mahler’s personality than conventional wisdom allows. Dionysus, the god Pan, the subversive Lord of Misrule has broken loose again, intoxicated with love of life.

Easily this was the finest Mahler Prom this season, though there hasn't been any real competition. It's probably not a "first Mahler", since it's not superficial and needs a basic understanding of the composer's work as a whole, but there is a lot in it, and it's a genuine contribution to Mahler performance practice.

Metzmacher has long championed "suppressed music", composers banned by the Nazis for various reasons. His approach is important, because he hears the music in its true beauty. My friend and I had come for Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang – Nachtstück. Wonderfully lustrous performance, the strings particularly luminous. This matters, for Der ferne Klang is a much deeper opera than its plot might suggest. "The Distant Sound"  is literally heard from afar as it's played offstage by an invisible musician. It's seductive, ravishing, hypnotic but dangerous, for the composer who hears it sacrifices all.

Although the opera has just been premiered in the US, it's had quite a few performances in recent years in Europe.  Indeed, Metzmacher conducted the whole opera earlier this year, please read a review in Die Welt. There is a lot more to Schreker than ultra-late Romantic, the cliché which he's been saddled with. Please see what else I've written about Schreker for example Die Gezeichneten, and Der Geburtstag der Infantin) him, and come back because I'll be doing more, esp on Christophorus.

The Royal Alberrt Hall went wild for Leonidas Kavakos because he's wonderful. He took three bows and did an encore. But I'd come for Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Kavakos exceeded all expectations. He brings out its European intensity, very rigorous, incisive playing. Because Kavakos treats it stringently as the serious music it really is, you appreciate how interesting Korngold really was, behind the surface glamour of Hollywood.

MOZART and Luigi Nono at Salzburg

Luigi Nono meets "After Dido"? Mark Berry's back from Salzburg where he caught Luigi Nono's Al gran sole di carico d'amore. Strange thing about this production was that it didn't involve many of the usual Nono regulars. In theory that's not a problem at all: Nono believed in reinvention. But Katie Mitchell and a mainly British cast, of whom only Susan Bickley is is really experienced in new music? Would it work? Read what Mark says HERE.

Now the Mozarts are up now - Cosi and more !

Salzburg 2009 - Mozart, Nono, Handel

Salzburg is where I'd like to be ..... especially as many of my friends are there. Or in Bayreuth. Keep an eye on http://boulezian. blogspot.com one of the blogs listed at right below. Mark is a Salzburg and Bayreuth regular and really knows his stuff! To whet your appetite, read Andrew Clark in the Financial Times.

Così fan tutte seems very good indeed:
"Now comes a staging that, though far from perfect, brings Così back into the reckoning as a Salzburg speciality. It marks the culmination of a Da Ponte trilogy directed in consecutive years by Claus Guth, and it is easily the most impressive of the three. Guth’s achievement ........ is to lend Mozart’s “school for lovers” a contemporary sheen without stretching credibility or denying the opera’s inner logic." Read more HERE

The one I really wanted to see, Luigi Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore. This is a real rarity. It's not at all "easy listening" , a powerful piece about the horrors of capitalism. Tickets cost about 300 Euro which, plus travel and accomodation, puts it beyond the means of real Nono fans. What those who could afford to go made of it, who knows? There were also recitals and talks connected with this, for those Nono fans who could make it. (Please let me know if you want details, the talk by Carola Neilinger-Vakil is important, she's the best Nono writer around). I'll curl up with the old Luther Zagrosek recording which is a bit muted, dreaming of what Metzmacher might do. It's hard to imagine the Vienna Philharmonic in this repertoire but then they've responded well to Metzmacher - they did Messiaen Eclairs sur l'au-delà with him and sound surprisingly idiomatic. The Salzburg cast, well-known UK singers, are not Nono specialists, so apart from one, the singing may be an unknown quality. Read the FT article HERE and follow the labels on the right for the MANY things I've done about Luigi Nono.

Then, Handel's Theodora with Christine Schäfer, good strong cast including Bernarda Fink, and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra who alone would have made this production worthwhile, they're so good. It's directed by Christof Loy, who did the amazing abstract Lulu and will be directing the new Royal Opera House Tristan und Isolde. Anything would be better than the 1996 Glyndebourne Theodora, with Star Wars set and clumpy costumes, making Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Liebermann look so ludicrous I switched off the video to listen. Read the FT report HERE.

photo credit HERE

Korngold Die tote Stadt, London ROH 1/09

Die tote Stadt is Korngold’s masterpiece in the old sense of the word, when a craftsman would produce a dazzling work to show the world what he could do. This is Korngold’s manifesto, so to speak. It displays his virtues beautifully. But his vices, too, are part of the mix. In Die tote Stadt we hear both the promise of his youth and echoes of what was to come.

The virtues are clear – this is delightful music full of action and romance. Korngold weaves genres together with ease and freedom. The Meyerbeer segment is a joy. He connects a tradition of popular opera while alluding to the most recent incarnation of the Pierrot story – Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg’s greatest hit, a sensation before the First World War. He references Wagner, the Strausses (Richard and both Johanns) and plenty of Puccini, particularly Madama Butterfly, another tale of obsessive love and death. Korngold is no ignoramus. He knows his music history and knows his audiences will relish the allusions. The good moments in this opera are superb, torrents of chromatic colour, sonorities so luscious one could almost drown in their gorgeousness.

“O Tanz, O Rausch!” sings Marietta, who loses herself in the ecstasy of dance. This mindless, instinctive surrender to sensuality animates the opera. Marietta symbolizes life and vigour. Only she dares confront the overpowering portrait of the dead Marie. Marie may have her moment of vengeance but ultimately, it’s Marietta who lives on. When Frank, Paul’s alter ego, suggests they leave Bruges, Paul sings a reprise of Marietta’s Lied – it becomes a song of triumph, not regret.

The message in Die tote Stadt could not be clearer. Paul must move on if he is to survive. The past can be treasured but cannot take priority over the future. Metzmacher perceptively said that the opera was “like an old photograph. You like to keep it and look at it. But reality is different”. The original novel, Bruges la Morte, by Georges Rodenbach, was illustrated with photographs of the city, preserved forever in one moment in the 19^th century.

This performance, at the Royal Opera House, under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, was perhaps truer to the spirit of the original than many others, for Metzmacher sees it as fresh, daring and modern. This is important because Korngold has, in the last ninety years, acquired a reputation for backward-looking sentimentality. Audiences do like what they assume to be tradition. In 1920, Die tote Stadt was cutting edge. Wozzeck and Jonny Spielt auf were years away. There are shockingly daring harmonies and clashes of key, especially in the Prelude to Act 3. Metzmacher’s clear, incisive style doesn’t cloak the modernity in a slush of sugar, but makes us realize just how aware and innovative Korngold could be. Orchestrally this was infinitely more lucid than the Leinsdorf recording, which, while lovely, hasn't quite the pungency to cut through the prettiness.

Korngold, like Richard Strauss in Elektra, seems to pull back from the edge. However much his admirers may champion his later work, it is Die tote Stadt that is his masterpiece. There isn’t place in this review for an assessment of Korngold’s career as a whole, but the very fact that he chose this ambivalent narrative is revealing. The libretto was written jointly by Korngold and his father, the domineering Julius Korngold, but this was concealed until 1975. How far did Julius’ arch-conservative hand hold sway over what the son did, consciously or otherwise ? Since the hero’s dead wife holds vampire-like control of his life, the relevance may not be purely accidental.

The original novel is far more sinister and disturbing. Korngold instead avoids facing the dilemmas by turning murder and madness into a dream, from which his protagonist can walk away without reflection. Yet reflection occurs again and again in the music and textual images. Willy Decker’s staging makes much of mirrors, portraits, of transparent glass surface that throw light back on the action. The “parallel reality” scenes in Act 1 are excellent as theatre, expressing the ambiguous, multi-layered duality that pervades the music and plot. The procession scene is designed to match the Meyerbeer scene – white costumes, masks, stylized ensembles. This is perceptive for it expresses visually the fundamental contrast in the opera between real life and artifice, between actors and characters.

First Night nerves may have accounted for lapses in the singing, though both Paul (Stephen Gould) and Marie/Marietta (Nadja Michael) are demanding roles that keep the singers on stage nearly the whole evening. The range in Marie/Marietta is fearsomely wide, so if Michael was more comfortable in the lower register, it was understandable. Gerald Finlay was luxury casting even though he only appears intermittently. As always, the Royal Opera Chorus was superb.

This Die tote Stadt made a convincing case for Korngold’s reputation. Glorious as it is, though, there are elements in it which make us realize in retrospect why the composer would later excel in music for film. Early movies were a kind of “extreme opera”, where music intensified dramatic action, where emotions were whipped up even if the plots were thin.

Korngold was writing for film long before the Anschluss, which caught him already in Hollywood. The colourful, episodic nature of Die tote Stadt, with its evocation of feeling, despite the weakness in the text, is a foretaste of where Korngold was to find himself. Only a few years previously, all movies were silent. Film music was the cutting edge of modernity, and Korngold was in the vanguard, creating a whole new genre. Please read the other posts on this blog about Die Tote Stadt, Korngold, Metzmacher and Bruges. There's more on this blog than most places on the net and it's totally original, too. Music of this period, and exilmusik in particular, is one of my special interests, explore a bit on this site. Special requests welcome.

see this for production pix
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/die_tote_stadt_.php

Korngold, modernist ? Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher, who is conducting Korngold’s Die tote Stadt at the Royal Opera House tomorrow, is a specialist in new music – listen to his Henze, Hartmann and Messiaen, and the German series “Who’s afraid of 20^th century music?”, one of the best antidotes to the idea that modern music is scary. So why is he conducting Korngold, whose reputation is ultra rich and retro ? “Because it is a modern opera”, he says “on the verge of modernism….It is like an old photograph. You like to keep it and look at it, but you know that reality is different”.

Read the full interview at

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/01/anne_ozorio_int.php

When Korngold wrote Die tote Stadt the First World War had only just ended. Naturally, Viennese minds turned to past glories. There’s a theory that in tough times, people need escapist art. Perhaps that’s why the opera was such a hit, for it reminded people how good the past could be. Korngold built into his music heavy hints that the vision was a “photograph”, just like the illustrations in Bruges la Morte, which are photographs, not drawings. In 1920, Wozzeck and Jonny spielt auf were years in the future. By the standards of the time, Die tote Stadt was ground breaking. As Metzmacher says, it is modern, and Erich made sure the hero moved on.

What was Vienna really like in the 1920’s ? From February 28^th, the South Bank is hosting a series, Vienna, 1900-35, City of Dreams. The concerts focus on big sellers like Mahler, Zemlinsky and Berg but there was a lot else going on besides. The big names are there to lure audiences to explore deeper and find out gradually about Schreker, Krenek, Eisler, Webern, Pfitzner, Braunfels, Hindemith and others. Plus about the literature, philosophy, art…. And remember Hitler was hanging out too and picking up ideas. There's that photo of him standing in the crowds in the Ringstrasse, and rumours he went to school with Wittgenstein. In any society, there are many different spheres operating simultaneously. Schoenberg may not have grabbed audiences but the ideas he created had far reaching influence. Indeed, it is interesting to compare Die tote Stadt with Gurrelieder.

So where does Korngold fit in? Die tote Stadt may be his masterpiece but where does it stand in context of other things going on? where does it stand in relationship to his other work? How does he develop, as people usually do? What is his lasting influence? There will always be segments of the audience who resolutely prefer the past, but what is the past anyway? The inescapable fact is that people often do prefer "the photograph" to reality, fossilization to ongoing life.

It would be interesting to see into young Korngold’s mind. He was intelligent, well aware of what was happening around him. But he was also surrounded by conservatives like his father. Mozart rebelled and did his own thing regardless, but Erich Korngold just seems too nice a guy to have done to Julius what Wolfgang did to Leopold ? Perhaps he bottled up his inner tensions. leading to his early death ? Or he channelled his creative needs in a different direction, ie the movies. It’s poignant listening to the Violin Concerto again. It’s famous because it’s relatively easy to schedule (unlike an opera) and is always popular with audiences. It’s instantly accessible because the themes are so familiar. They come from the films, though the films themselves recycled themes he was working on prewar.

Into the soul of Erich Korngold

Who really was Erich Korngold? We know the facts of his life and lists of his opus numbers, but who was the man, what made him tick? I’ve never swallowed the “more Korn than Gold” epithet. He was no fool, but genuinely talented, and smart enough to know what was going on around him.

As a young man he had everything going for him. Music flowed out of him as easily as from a young Mozart. Like Mozart, he had a powerful and pushy father whose contacts could have advanced anyone’s career. Vienna was thriving, culturally. It must have been exciting to be where so much was going on, in so many different circles.

This is certainly not to suggest that Korngold “should” have taken on new developments. He moved in much fancier circles than the Schoenberg set and probably wouldn’t have given them much time, even though he worked with Zemlinsky, who obviously knew all about them. But Schoenberg wasn’t the only modernity in town – even Zemlinsky moved ahead: His Lyric Symphony is strikingly “modern” in its own way. Nobody is going to do "new" the same: music doesn’t work in neat little boxes. The current fashion for dividing music into tonal and atonal is schoolboy shallowness.

So there’s young Korngold born with a silver spoon in his mouth and everything going for him. Listen to the first two String Quartets and dream of what might have been. Die tote Stadt, for all its high Romantic lushness, has a lot more going for it than the sometimes ultra suss treatments it gets. With Ingo Metzmacher, a specialist in the avant garde, we should hear a much more incisive approach. But if Die tote Stadt is such a masterpiece, where does it lead ? Korngold was only 22, 23 when he wrote it. It was an instant success, so the pressure to top it must have been intense. Hence, perhaps Das Wunder der Heliane, which received a drubbing last year even with a sympathetic audience and Jurowski conducting. So how did young Korngold respond to the pressure ? It can’t have been easy for a gifted young man used to having things go smoothly. 

Lots of child prodigies don’t go on to be Mozart. There’s nothing to be ashamed of about that. What is interesting, to me anyway, is to try to understand the way things happen and how people develop inside. Having a father like Julius might have been an advantage but it was also inhibiting. The old man wanted things his way and couldn’t deal with Erich marrying a woman who most parents would have been delighted with. 

Then there’s Erich’s personality, harmonious, accommodating, none of the obsession that seems to drive some composers. The reason I’ve been doing so much on Bruges-la-Morte is that it may reveal something about Erich and Julius by default. Obviously composers completely change their sources. An opera is a whole new work. But the differences are telling. In the novel, Hugues is totally dominated by the memory of his dead wife, who exerts a vampire-like paralysis on his life. Hugues is a creepy loner, living in an emotional desert unpopulated by anyone other than his servant, who leaves him. He doesn’t touch Jane but keeps her like a statue, like the piece of his wife’s hair, in a glass box never to be touched. In the opera, Paul is a reasonably sane fellow who has friends and real life relationships and isn’t nearly so screwed up by religion. In the novel, Hugues kills Jane and goes mad, repeating mechanically “Morte, Bruges la morte”. In the opera, it’s all just a dream. If most of us dreamed of killing a friend, we’d worry. Not Paul, who simply goes on to a new life.Also significant is that Erich and Julius concealed their joint authorship of the libretto for many years. A shrink might think, what's going on? 

A few years ago, the late Stuart Feder wrote an excellent analytical biography of Charles Ives, examining his relationship with his father and the effect on his creative work. Feder was a child psychologist as well as a musician, so his book is full of perceptive insights, much too detailed to go into here. Interestingly, when Charles retired, as a millionaire, having achieved what his father's family wanted of him, he stopped writing music. Like Sibelius, something held him back just when he seemed to find good conditions in which to work. It’s not enough to blame Ives’s late career on depression, or the Silence of Järvenpää on alcohol. Similarly. it's not enough to "explain" Korngold by simply saying that fashions in music had changed. 

Korngold’s facility came easily and he was no fool. Perhaps his real achievement isn’t so called “serious” music but in another genre. There still is far too much prejudice about film music. Not long ago a major newspaper ran an article which baldly stated that any composer who wrote for film should not be taken seriously. Evidently written by someone who’d never heard of Britten, Prokofiev, or many others. This attitude hinders a more enlightened appreciation of Korngold’s achievements.
 

Only a few years before Korngold went to America, all films were silent. Music for film was an entirely new genre, cutting-edge modernity in its own way. It was different because music could no longer be through-composed, but instead had to be written in conjunction with film. Sort of "extreme opera". Had Johann Strauss or, for that matter, Wagner, lived into the movie era, they'd have had a ball. Movie music was created to pull heartstrings, not for intellectual analysis, so judging it in the same terms as ordinary music doesn't work. Indeed, it's almost a reversion to the pre 19th century approach to music, that it should be either religious or entertainment, not "high art".

Moreover, Hollywood was a lot like the old image of Vienna, only much richer, much brasher, much more opulent. So Hollywood composers, most of whom had known the old world, felt quite at home despite the sunshine and strange customs. In many ways, Hollywood carried on the Vienna image when it died in war-torn Europe. Even Hanns Eisler, surly old communist that he was, wrote music that won Oscar nominations. So maybe Korngold found his voice in a medium other than what his father dominated. There’s a lot about Korngold and about modern music we haven’t yet thought about.

Bruges-la-morte 2 Die tote Stadt

Hugues keeps locks of his first wife’s hair in a crystal box. It never changes, but Jane is getting older. She gets wrinkles, starts having new friends, goes shopping, doesn’t stay passive. So Hugues resolves to leave her. “You’re kidding” she mocks. She knows he can’t face “un second veuvage”. That night he goes home, filled with free floating anxiety. Death seems to have returned, “emmaillotée en linceul dans le brouillard.” The swans, so normally calm, are screaming. It’s a bad omen.

Soon it’s the Feast of the Holy Blood, when there’s a procession in the streets, Barbe, Hugues' pious old servant decorates the sombre mansion with masses of flowers, so it’s perfumed like a sacristry. Into the house pour sounds of bells from all round town. She’s exalted, as if in the presence of angels. Then Hugues rings, and says a lady is coming for dinner. Barbe is in shock, for she knows about her master’s secret “concubinage”. Then she leaves. Moments later Jane arrives. She wants to open the shutters but Hugues is afraid it will attract attention. Meanwhile, the procession draws close. People are singing, Hugues visualizes the ancient knights of Flanders, smells the incense, sees the massed crowd in the street, falling to their knees as the Reliquary approaches. Jane and Hugues sit together on the sofa. Then

La musique des serpents et des ophicléides monta plus grave,
charria la guirlande frêle,
intermittente, du chant des soprani.

Jane looks round the strange mansion with its portraits of Hugues' dead wife. Then she spots the crystal box with the dead woman’s hair, opens it and laughs. To Hugues, it’s a “profanation”. He’s never dared touch it, all these years. He goes berserk and strangles Jane with her own hair, wrapped around her neck. Jane’s cadaver turns pale, like his dead wife, long ago. Outside, the procession has passed, the streets are empty, silence descends once more.

Et Hugues continûment répétait: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» d'un air machinal, d'une voix détendue, essayant de s'accorder: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» avec la cadence des dernières cloches, lasses, lentes, petites vieilles exténuées qui avaient l'air--est-ce sur la ville, est-ce sur une tombe?--d'effeuiller languissamment des fleurs de fer!

This novel was the inspiration behind Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, who used the pseudonym Paul Schott to write the libretto. I do wonder how Freudian it must have been to young Erich, utterly dominated by his father's personality. The tales differ, of course. But the original is worth reading because it’s so atmospheric and beautifully written. Long out of copyright, it can be read in full at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14911/14911-8.txt

Interestingly, one of the features of the original novel is that it was illustrated by actual photographs, so the reality of the setting blends into the unreality of the narrative. Maybe there is a house on the quai du Rosaire. Maybe it’s still stuffed with 19th century furniture and dusty mirrors ? Maybe Hugues and Jane remain suspended in time and space in a different dimension ? After posting this I received a message from someone who knows Bruges well. There really is a Quai du rosaire and there really are ancient houses there. Uncanny! see
http://www.pbase.com/francist/image/2840795