Clara Schumann 200th Anniversary Festival, St John's Smith Square

Clara  Schumann 200th Anniversary Festival at St. John's Smith Square, London,  22nd - 24th February  : "a weekend of music and discussion on Clara Schumann – pianist, composer, wife, mother, friend, and muse.".  Clara  was a pioneer - one of the first "celebrity pianists" like Chopin or Liszt.  She toured Europe, drawing  large audiences wherever she went, so much in demand that she was effectively the breadwinner in the family. She organized her own schedule, bookings and what  today we'd call "management". And all this at  a time when women were expected to eschew public activity, and middle class married women in particular were supposed to stay at home. She certainly had enough children to keep her occupied, and Robert must have been hell to live with at times.

All the more reason to honour her, not merely as the wife of a great composer. Without her, Robert might not have produced the masterpieces of his Liederjahr, and much else.  Indeed, Robert and Clara as a pair were social pioneers, too, since Robert  supported her career and independence. Not many men were so progressive.  He also encouraged her to branch out as a composer. The Festival begins on Friday 22nd with a recital featuring Clara's complete works for voice and piano with Sophie Karthäuser, Alessandro Fisher and pianist Eugene Asti, who recorded the songs for Hyperion.  The recital,is preceeded by a talk by Natasha Loges, who is an excellent speaker : definitely recommended.  On Saturday 23rd Eugene Asti will lead a masterclass in Clara's songs for singer-pianist duos  from Oxford Lieder Young Artists. This should be high quality, a notch above many masterclasses. This scheme is an offshoot of the OxfordLiedervFestival, organized by Sholto Kynoch, with which Asti, Natasha and Stephen Loges have been connected for many years. 

Two further concerts on Saturday 23rd February.  "The Old Masters", (a term used by Clara to refer to the likes of Bach and Handel) juxtaposes Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C sharp BWV848 (a staple piece from Clara’s recital repertoire) with three of Clara’s own works from 1845, all performed by Gamal Khamis. The concert ends with another piece that nods towards the Baroque – Brahms’ Handel Variations Op. 24 (dedicated to Clara), performed by Mishka Rushdie Momen. In their early years of marriage, Robert and Clara devoted
considerable time to the study of fugue and counterpoint, notably Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier which Robert referred to as his “daily bread”.  The evening recital, titled "Clara and Robert" concludes with familiar numbers from Robert’s Myrthen, which he presented to Clara as a gift on their wedding day, and some Rückert settings from Clara and Robert’s joint opus. This progarmme includes Clara’s early Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann Op. 20. The second half of this concert follows a similar vein; Beethoven’s song cycle An die
ferne Geliebte Op. 98, with its longing for a distant loved one, precedes Robert’s Fantasy in C which includes a brief quotation from the Beethoven cycle, undoubtedly penned with Clara in mind.

Three concerts on Sunday 24th February.  The first,  starting at 11 am, is "Clara and Brahms" and features Clara’s Piano Trio in G minor Op. 17 (her only piano trio) togetherwith one of her personal favourites – Brahms’ dramatic and turbulent Piano Trio in C minor Op. 101. Both works will be performed by the Busch Trio.  Felix Mendelssohn and his close friendship with the Schumanns (and Brahms) is celebrated in “The Mendelssohn Connection” in the afternnon. The tight-knit nature of this friendship group is reflected by the opening works – 2 Brahms settings of poetry by Felix Schumann (son of Clara and Robert, who they named after Felix Mendelssohn). The rest of the programme consists solely of works by Felix Mendelssohn – a selection of Lieder; his Lieder ohne Worte Book 5 Op. 62 for solo piano (dedicated to Clara), with its well-known Ein Frühlingslied; and, to conclude, the stunning Piano Four Hands in A MWV T 4 ‘Allegro Brilliant’ Op. 92, which Clara and Felix played together in Leipzig.Mhairi Lawson (soprano) joins Asti, Momen and Khamis.

The final concert begins with two pieces as a memento of Clara's friendship with the violinist Joseph Joachim: firstly, Clara’s own 3
Romances, one of her more frequently performed works nowadays; and secondly, the F-A-E Sonata which the composers dedicated to Joseph. This piece was first played through at a friendly get together by Clara and Joseph at Clara’s home. Both works will be performed by members of the Busch Trio. The Clara Schumann Festival ends with Brahms’ Vier ernste Gesänge, written towards the end of his life. The songs were first played to a group of close friends at a private gathering immediately after Clara’s funeral. After the cycle was published, Brahms sent a copy to Clara’s daughter Marie Schumann. Accompanying the score was a letter in which Brahms wrote: “…You will not be able to play through these songs just now because the words would be too affecting. But I beg you to regard them… as a true memorial to your beloved mother.” Brahms passed away 11 months after Clara. Stephen Loges sings, accompanied by Eugene Asti, with Omri Epstein and Mathieu van Bellen (violin).

Tickets available HERE, for individual recitals or weekend pass.

Ollie's back ! Knussen Busoni Brahms

Oliver Knussen, Jukka Harju, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Oliver Knussen is back, and in excellent form, conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Helsinki in  a programme typical of Ollie's quirky flair. Ferrucio Busoni's Rondo Arlecchinesco (1915), and Nocturne Symphonique with Knussen's   Concerto for Horn and Orchestra (1994/5) and Brahms Symphony no 2   A typical Knussen programme, devised with wit and musical nous.  (Video stream available until September 2 2018 on: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/080948-001-A/oliver-knussen-conducts-busoni-brahms-and-knussen/   )
Ferrucio Busoni does not fit any neat pigeonhole. Busoni believed that “music was born free and to win freedom is its destiny”, and that it was just in its infancy as an art form.  Busoni envisioned the opening out of horizons. Just as the world changes, culture cannot stand still, and music changes with it.   Although his own music isn't wildly radical, he paved the way ahead for others. His theories about music and culture may prove to be his legacy.  No less than Edgard Varėse called him “a figure out of the Renaissance”, who “crystallised my half formed ideas, stimulated my imagination, and determined, I believe, the future development of my music”.

Busoni and Knussen have much in common. Indeed, understanding Knussen's life-long interest in Busoni explains a lot about what makes Ollie tick.  Busoni's Rondo Arlecchinesco is based on his opera Arlecchino.  Arlecchino, or Harlequin, is one of the standard Commedia dell'arte figures, the archetype of traditional Italian theatre.  He's a servant, but not servile, so is depicted as a clown who subverts the pretensions of his masters.  Leporello before his time ! Busoni places Arlecchino centre stage, the four parts of the opera depicting different aspects of Arlecchino's persona.   Quicksilver figures introduce the Rondo, soon developing into fanfare, from which brooding, surging figures emerge.  Knussen brings out the cheeky inventiveness in these figures, so when the staccato march resumes, complete with militaristc horns, the figures seem to fly, irrepressibly away from the constraints of control freakery which militarism represents. The bassoons and lower brass blow raspberries at the horns : disorceder poking fun at order. A voice sings "Lalalalala!", Harlequin's defiant song of freedom. Though the brushes may beat on the drums, our anti-hero cannot be suppressed.  Significantly, Arlecchino was written just before the 1914-1918 war and premiered during the hostilities. Knussen's a Harlequin, too, in his own inimitable way. Who else could have written operas like Where the Wild Things are and Higgelty-Piggelty Pop !, which are by no means children's operas though they're based on Maurice Sendak.  Please read my analysis of these operas HERE (Faith in Food) and HERE.

The fluency with which Knussen conducted Busoni's Nocturne Symphonique demonstrated a mature understanding of the darker mysteries of Busoni's idiom.   Not for nothing that this preceded Knussen's own Horn Concerto, op 73, 1994/5, soloist Jukka Harju) which he has said "assumed more and more character of a Nachtmusik (in a Mahlerian sense)" as he worked on it.  Short bursts of sound pop up, bright and alert. The horn enters, long calls weaving and moving , the orchestra commenting in brief explosive outbursts.  Bright light winds and brass sparkle around the deeper timbre of the horn as the music enters a new and almost sinister phase, bassooons and contrabassoons rumbling menace.  The horn line rises, as if searching direction by reaching into the space around it.  Near-mayhem builds up around it, but the horn persists, despite ominous crashes of timpani. The horn continues reaching out, at first alone, then led on by muted horns and trumpets.  The horn calls, met by crashing cymbals - the clash of metal against metal - but the horn has the advantage since it breathes "alive" as it's being played by human breath.  Over the last 25 years, Knussen's Horn Concerto has been done so many times, it's almost standard repertoire, and for good reason.

 As a teenager, Knussen looked like Claude Debussy's secret twin. Now he's in his 60's, he resembles Johannes Brahms.  But that's not why he ended the Helsinki concert with Brahms Symphony no 2  .  Musically, it connects with Busoni's Nocturne Symphoniue and with Knussen's Horn Concerto and links them all to much more ancient sources that might lie in European folk traditions, where dense forests are metaphors for the psyche, and fairy tales a language for coping with mysterious forces.  "Aha !" I thought, "the spirit of Maurice Sendak!"  At moments I thought I could hear echoes of Brahms Lullaby, which is perfectly pertinent.  Knussen's Brahms is sometimes unorthodox, but this time he was conducting to the manner born, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra playing with emotional depth.  

Jörg Widmann Berlin Birmingham and Brahms, too

Jörg Widmann at the Staatsoper Berlin on Wednesday and at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on Thursday.   In Berlin, Daniel Barenboim conducted Widmann's Zweites Labyrinth (2006) and in Birmingham Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducted his Babylon Suite , based on Widmann's opera Babylon (2012), the suite premiered earlier this year by Daniel Harding at the Philharmonie, Paris.  Widmann was also the soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in Birmingham. The man gets around ! Proof that new music fits in fine with the mainstream.

Widmann's Zweites Labyrinth für Orchestergruppen is the second in a series of three explorations where sound creates mazes.  In a labyrinth you find your way through by trial and error, picking up clues along the way.  Zweites Labyrrinth poses puzzles - inventive, cryptic sounds  which intrigue because you can't quite place them.  Two very different types of cimbalom (Hungarian and Ukrainian), an archaic guitar with a very wide body, a zither, and conventional instruments used in highly unorthodox ways to throw you off track.  The instruments with strings overlap with the instruments for wind, so even the "groups" interchange. .The guitar is beaten so the resonance in its body sings as if it were a primitive wind. The piccolos are tapped so sounds vibrate in curious patterns.  Confusing, yet very  rewarding, since the piece is constructed with the elegant symmetry of a good labyrinth.  Also delightful - the guitarist/zitherist looked like Helmut Lachenmann !  Also on the Berlin programme, Maurizio Pollini playing Schumann Piano Concerto A moll Op 54 and an extremely fine Debussy's Images for orchestra.  

 In contrast, Widmann's Babylon Suite which, distilling a much larger work, is necessarily more episodic, probably reflecting what happens in the opera.  Apparently, the opera deals with opulence and excess, and the defeat of an empire.  Thus the snatches of melody, half formed and decontructed, fragments salvaged from a greater whole.  Huge arcs in the orchestration like giant walls built of myriad cells, and delicate passages where solo winds sing, surrounded by a mist of strings.  Though there are "obvious" passages like a jaunty military band, Widmann's Babylon Siuite isn't pictorial so much as a collage of multiple impressions in profusion. Just like Babylon itself, before it imploded.  

Widmann is news, but the CBSO's Brahms Symphony no 1 was so good that it was headline, too.  A superb performance, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla , bringing out the richness in the piece. Almost inevitably Beethoven pops up whenever this symphony is discussed but it is distinctively Brahms.   Grandeur, yes, and certainly in this confident and expansive performance. But Brahmsian signatures, too, like the recurring melody and even the suggestion of chorale.  Schumann, too, hovers over  the piece with probably even more personal significance.  

Brahms German Requiem Fabio Luisi Barbican

Fabio Luisi conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Brahms A German Requiem op 45 and Schubert, Symphony no 8 in B minor D759 ("Unfinished").  The Barbican Centre is built over the remains of a much older London, which still exists in hidden corners.  During the week, the metropolis is manic, but on a Sunday night, a quiet calm descends, and once more you can feel the presence of the past amid the high tech towers and traffic.  Under the Barbican Hall itself was Three Herring Court,  where my companion's ancestors  lived in extreme poverty.   An atmospheric way in which to experience Brahms German Requiem, which commemorates the endurance of the human spirit across boundaries of time and place.  Not for nothing did Brahms blend together verses from the Old and New Testaments, evidence of an upbringing steeped in North German Lutheran tradition, even though he rejected conventional piety, and lived much of his life in staunchly Catholic Vienna. . 

The voices of the London Symphony Chorus rose beautifully from the hushed opening chords. "Selig sind, die da Lied tragen", for those who go forth weeping bearing precious seed will return  "Mit Freuden und bringen ihre Garben". Death is a not an end, but a process.   With Sir Simon Rattle as Music Director of the LSO,  Londoners get another advantage : Simon Halsey,  Rattle's  choral counterpart through the years at Birmingham and in Berlin. The LSO Chorus sounded luminous, voices carefully blended.  If anything, the LSO Chorus sounded even richer in the second movement Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras though this brought the orchestra to the fore. The "march" theme  was particularly well defined, with a good sense of surge underlying the solemn, deliberate pace, so when the lyrical motif appeared, it suggested light and hope. The fanfare at the end of the movement was  understated but confident.

Simon Keenlyside sang the baritone part, which he has taken many times before. Experience showed.  Brahms quotes Psalm 9 (verses 4 to 7), where a man contemplates his fate : humility is of the essence, surrounded as he is by the tumult in the orchestra.  Yet the assured, unforced timbre of Keenlyside's singing highlighted the inner strength that comes from faith, whatever the source of that faith.  When the chorus joined in, the protagonist was no longer alone, in every sense.  Perhaps for this reason the song with soprano (Julia Kleiter) Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit was added, for it is a moment of illumination, before the mood turns sombre yet again.  The solemn processional of the second movement echoes in the sixth.  Forceful chords from the orchestra, and a blazing fanfare of brass, strings and percussion, and the chorus in full swell , for momentous changes are to come.  The trumpets rang out, as in the Book of Revelation, a trumpet will herald the End of Time, when the dead of past ages will be raised to life again. Keenlyside's voice rang out "Wir werden verwandelt werden" and the chorus entered,  forcefully "Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg!"  A thunderous finale, after which it took some moments to recover.

Fabio Luisi and the London Symphony Orchestra were impressive, and their Schubert Symphony no 8 was excellent, well poised and stylish.   But the full honours went to the London Symphony Chorus, for Brahms's German Requiem is one of the high points in the choral repertoire.  "Selig sind die Toten.....daß sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit".  Rich, fulsome playing from the LSO, luminous singing from the LSO Chorus.  The German Requiem concluded in transcendance.

Please also see : Brahms exults ! Vier ernste Lieder and other songs : Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach

and Hanns Eisler Deutsches Sinfonie: an anti fascist cantata

This review will also appear in Opera Today

Brahms and Schiller : antidote to toxic 2016

Evening Scene with Moon (1801) Abraham Pether

As this horrible year draws to an end, Johannes Brahms Der Abend op 64/2 from the part song set Drei Quartette published in 1874, to a poem by Friedrich von Schiller. from 1776.  The "strahlende Gott", the radiant sun, is sinking  The piano plays one note at a time, like a heavy tread.   The fields  are parched, the horses pulling a cart are weary.  As the  sun sinks,so does the spirit.  Then a sudden vision :"Siehe, wer aus des Meers krystallner Woge" Almost in unison the four voices  spring to life, decorating the word "kristallner" so it shines.  The pace quickens.  "Rascher fliegen der Rosse", as if the horses sense refreshment. The godly Thetys beckons. Thetys was a Titan, the wild tribe who preceded the Greek Gods. Her signifier is water: the source of life, replenishing the parched (hence the reference to dried fields). She was mother of the Oceanides, the spirits of the Oceans whose tides control the earth.  The four voices, like horses, are energized, their lines well differentiated. The piano part prances, too.  Suddenly, "Stille halten die Rosse, Trinken die kühlende Flut." Now,

"An dem Himmel herauf mit leisen Schritten
Kommt die duftende Nacht; ihr folgt die süße
Liebe. Ruhet und liebet!
Phöbus, der liebende, ruht."

Up in the heavens, night descends quietly, the smells of the night are fragrant, damp, refreshing. "Ruhet und Liebet!" repeated twice, for emphasis.  Beloved Phoebus (Apollo, the sun) rests and loves. What is Der Abend about? Perhaps it's about sleep, offering an escape from toil. Yet it could also be about Death, the sleep from which you don't wake because you've gone on further. About 20 years ago I went to the funeral of someone my own age who died young after a long struggle. I'll swear the song was being played!  Tactfully, I tried to ask. "Joni Mitchell" said someone. This year, as the world seems to be hurtling, hell bent, towards Armageddon,  it's tempting to think on Lethe. But better to stay, struggle and fight back.

Brahms exults ! Vier ernste Gesänge Goerne Eschenbach

Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach , Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge and other Lieder, from Harmonia Mundi, is an extremely welcome release, since Goerne has.been singing these songs in recital for 20 years, so distinctively that they have become his emblem, so to speak.  Now, at last a performance has been preserved for posterity.

"Brahms free of the thick veneer of varnish", I wrote about Goerne's first Vier ernste Gesänge at the Wigmore Hall. When he wrote these last songs, Brahms was facing death but  looking back on the North German tradition that he had left behind decades before, but also by extension to the defiant spirit of the Reformation. Like Ein deutsches Requiem, that in itself, in pious, obedient Catholic Austria, suggests rugged independence of spirit.  There is no heavenly afterlife in Vier ernste Gesänge.  These aren't last songs, either, but specifically "serious".  Thus the significance of the piano part in Vier ernste Gesänge :  two performers alone against the world.  Brahms and Clara Schumann, perhaps, both pianists looking back and fearlessly ahead.  Christoph Eschenbach and Goerne are an ideal partnership. They've worked together for years and both approach the work with uncompromising emotional directness.

Eschenbach's introduction is firm, and resolute. "Den es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh, wie dies stirbt, so stirbt er auch". Eschenbach shapes the lines around "Es fährt alles am einen Ort", so they fly turbulently upwards, as if propelled by wind: for we are dust, returning to dust.  No Biedermeier sentimentality, but quiet dignity.  A strident chord cuts the song off abruptly. You don't mess with Death.  Then a softer, more reflective mood. "Ich wandte mich und sah an alle", reflecting on suffering  and the bitterness of life.  Goerne sings with such compassion that his voice conveys both sympathy and protest. For what is the human condition if the dead are better off than those yet to experience the evils of the world?  "O Tod, o Tod, wie bitter bitter, wie bitter bist du" sings Goerne, as if he were addressing Death man to man, each "wie bitter" beautiful shaped, like a genuine, personal rebuke.  Eschenbach plays the transition firmly, but sensitively, emphasizing the growing resolve in Goerne';s voice. This is a transit.  "O Tod, o Tod " sings Goerne, breathing warmth into the "wie wohl" which follows. "Wie wohl tust du".

Thus the affirmative resolution of the last song and its vigorous mood. The gifts of many tongues, of prophecy and even of faith, are nothing without love.  Then the glorious line "Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Speigel", when Goerne's voice rises, extraordinarily clearly and bright for a baritone happiest in the lower range, as if lit from within with inner strength.  Eschenbach's piano sings along.  "Nun aber bleibet Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei: aber ist die Liebe ist die größte unter ihnen"  Not the glories of the world, nor status, but love, to which all can aspire.  Goerne's non-strident, purposeful  expressiveness is, like love, both simple and extremely perceptive. Hugo Wolf, who eked a subsistence from music journalism, detested Brahms. "The true test of a composer", he wrote, "is this : Can he exult? Wagner can exult, Brahms cannot". What a pity Wolf hadn't heard Goerne and Eschenbach, who demonstrate that pietist purity is a form of exultation, and that Brahms can exult very well, without shouting.

These Vier ernste Gesänge will make this recording a must, but so too will the superb performances of Brahms' nine Lieder und Gesänge op 32 (1864) to texts by Karl August Graf von Platen and Georg Freidrich Daumer, poets with whom Brahms had great affinity, Excellent booklet notes, by Roman Hinke, which explain how the Platen and Daumer songs "mark nothing less than the entry into a new, surprisingly cryptic and conflict-ridden world ....what might have led Brahms to turn to Platen's poetic existentialism, to take his dark fantasies of the other side as the starting point of a disturbing sequence of songs".  In  "Wie rafft' ich mich auf", the poet leaps up in the middle of the night, wandering through the silent city. The lines "in die Nacht" repeat, obsessively, The stars look down, accusingly : "how have you spent your life?" they seem to ask.  The following six songs reiterate this question.  Brahms chose his texts well and his settings give further coherence to the set.  A river flows past, swiftly, love ends.  From  trauma to tenderness: the three Daumer songs are gentler, closer to cosy, popular misconceptions of Brahms. Lovely piano melodies, but the last song Wie bist du, meine Königen" reaches an altogether more refined level of sophistication. Goerne sings the refrain "Wonnevoll, wonnervoll" (blissful, blissful) with such grace that it feels like a moment of rapture, pulling the whole group of songs together as an integrated cycle. Again, Goerne and Eschenbach prove that Brahms exults!

Heinrich Heine, with his acidic irony, might not seem natural Brahms territory, but the Lieder nach Gedicten von Heinrich Heine op 85 (1878) are lovely.  Sommerabend and Mondenschein make an exquisite pair.  Not many concert pianists (or conductors) have the ability to accompany song with the sensitive support a singer needs. With Eschenbach, the goal is music, not showmanship, art, not ego.  Goerne can therefore sing with pointed understatement, knowing that he and Eschenbach are on the same page, literally.  The Heine set ends with Meerfahrt,  in which the lovers drift in a little boat, past a ghostly island, from which sweet music resounds. They float past "Trostlos auf weitem Meer". Are they lost, or have they escaped what might be hidden in the mists?  Brahms isn't letting on, but we don't mind as we drift on, to the sound of oars and waves. 

Not the usual Brahms German Requiem - ENO chorus

The ENO Chorus will be doing Brahms Ein Deutches Requiem (A German Requiem) in three churches around London on 15th, 16th and 29th April.  But not the usual Brahms German Requiem. Instead, the relatively less well known "London" version from 1871. It's not a transcription but a through composed chamber adaptation written by Brahms himself.  The ENO chorus will be conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, with Eleanore Dennis and Benedict Nelson as soloists with Kate Golla and Chris Hopkins as pianists. Get tickets here.

Brahms's ideas differed from conventional approaches to Requiem Masses.  He expressed his values as an agnostic, a humanist and a North German. His  contemporaries joked that conservative Catholic Viennese audiences needed a stretch of imagination to fully appreciate it. The chamber version is even more spartan and pure than the version for full ensemble, and thus lends itself well to more intimate performance spaces - closer still to the rugged  spirit of Lutheran pietism  While the impact is less powerful the focus is more personal. "One man and his God" whatever that God might be.  The benchmark recording, from 2004, is by Accentus , conducted by Laurence Equilbey, a performance so beautifully ethereal that the voices seem to take flight like a flock of birds, each individual but co-operating in tight formation. 

The ENO Chorus will be using two pianos to  better "stretch" the balance. this also works better because it showcases the piano parts. The crucial line of the music is articulated clearly, so it feels  understated and yet definitive. When the famous melody appears, and the voices intone, the music can seem like a moment of private contemplation.  This foundation allows the voices to soar, unfettered. While almost no-one is in the superhuman league of Accentus (then with Sandrine Piau)  the ENO Chorus is extremely good, and one of the company's great assets.  Support them - they are too good to be wasted. Ideally, if these concerts succeed, they could bring extra income as well as giving London a new specialist, fully professional choir, with a mission exploring unusual choral repertoire. Please see my piece on helping the ENO to make money by capitalizing on its unique position in the market, much more effectively.  

Nicholas Collon CBSO Mahler 10 Webern Brahms

Nicholas Collon conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Mahler 's Symphony no 10, or to put it more accurately Deryck Cooke's third Performing edition of Mahler's manuscript. Although it might seem redundant to point out that Mahler didn't complete the symphony, that basic fact is fundamental to any interpretation.  Performance practice , and the evaluation thereof, has to deal with its very open-endedness. No one knows what Mahler would have done, had he lived, but one thing is clear. He was looking forwards, not backwards.

When he was working on the Tenth, the parameters of his life had been overturned. He had left Vienna acrimoniously, he'd been betrayed by his wife.  Literally, he was in new territory.  With all his previous symphonies, he had broken new ground. So whither the 10th?  Mahler famously said "My time will come". Perhaps "the time has come" now for Mahler's Tenth.  Prof Henry-Louis de la Grange's monumental work has demonstrated just how intellectual and progressive Mahler really was. Far from being the maudlin neurotic Alma portrayed  in her memoirs, he was a man keenly aware of what was going on in the world around him, mentally disciplined and unconventional. This has profound implications for performance practice.In the case of Mahler 10, there simply isn't any received wisdom.  We are fortunate that Alma's embargo saved us from highly interventionist approaches coloured by factors other than deeper knowledge of the composer and his mind. 

The CBSO has an unerring instinct for picking exceptional conductors, with whom they develop stimulating  relationships.  It's a bold and very creative philosophy.  From what I've heard so far of Chief Conductor designate Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, she could do great  things. Their instincts seem to pay off, too, with Nicholas Collon.  He made his name with the Aurora Orchestra , the lively chamber ensemble. Although I personally haven't heard him conduct large orchestras, he's worked with the CBSO before: now we can hear why.  This Mahler 10 wasn't conventional but all the more rewarding for that, since good performance should stretch our understanding of the repertoire.

The Adagio glowed with connotations of Tristan und Isolde, which Mahler always made a point of conducting in Vienna, and particularly poignant in the context of this symphony.  The interplay of the two principal themes was well defined, against a surging backdrop. With his keen ear for the pulse of Nature, perhaps Mahler was intuitively evoking the ocean which he'd crossed, physically and emotionally. The themes though elegant seem to stalk each other: lovely as the music is, it's undercut with the chill of sharp, shrill almost staccato figures, eventually rent asunder by blazing dissonance.  The pastoral theme which emerges grows more refined and more distant. 

At first, I couldn't understand Collon's approach to the first Scherzo, where the jagged edges  seemed more frantic than demonic.  On re-listening, however, it clicked. It allowed more emphasis on the Purgatorio, which may well have been the heart of the symphony, though it's so brief, and on the more complex second Scherzo.  On the title page of the second Scherzo, Mahler writes “The Devil is dancing it with me! Madness, seize me … destroy me! Let me forget that I exist, so that I cease to be.” But a careful observer will note that Mahler then adds “dass ich ver ….” (so that I ….) and trails off without completing the idea. It’s a preposition, but this whole work is a kind of preposition.  Collon's first scherzo thus felt like the first stage in a journey, further focusing attention on whatever might have been the ultimate goal of the symphony.  

In this Finale, Collon and the CBSO  connected the end with the beginning,  thoughtful symmetry connecting to the duality in the Adagio.  The hollow drumbeats in this  "Fireman's Funeral" were chilling, but the theme resembles the poignant pastoral theme in the adagio. It resolves itself in another dissonance, which yet again dissolves into upward, searching arcs, more and more rarified til the symphony reaches a kind of sublimation.  We don't know where Mahler would have gone, but this ending leaves the horizons open, and  free. 

This concert began with Webern, Six Pieces Op 6 in the chamber transcription, the first version of which was written around the time of Mahler 10 though Webern, for obvious reasons, didn't know that.  Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were fascinated by Mahler, and there are many good reasons behind this programme. Incidentally, Boulez discovered Mahler and Webern at roughly the same period, long before he recorded either. Also included was Brahms Four Songs for Women's Voices Op 17 (1862). There aren't many pieces in which a chorus is accompanied by two horns, a harp and nothing more. This minimalist accompaniment sets the voices off surprisingly well. The CBSO Youth Choir did the honours, singing with angelic brightness.  Their accents were English, not German, but I didn't mind at all, since that added to the slightly surreal atmosphere of the settings, which are strange, but in a nice way. 

Why I'm at the LPO Wednesday Orozco-Estrada

Andrés Orozco-Estrada, new principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducts Dvořák Cello Concerto and Mahler Symphony no 1 at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday.  Listen to this clip HERE where he conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra  in Saariaho, Sibelius and Brahms.   The mark of a good conductor, for me, is the way he or she respects the composer above all else. "We are here to serve the music, not the other way round" as Elly Ameling once said.

Saariaho, Sibelius and Brahms - three very different composers indeed, yet  Orozco-Estrada  understands how each of them functions.  Kaija Saariaho's music isn't easy to conduct, with its ultra-diaphanous textures and elusive tonality, and some of it is quite uneven.  Her Orion, which dates from 2002, is a specially beautiful work, Orion is the name of a group of stars in the galaxy, so the music  sparkles like starlight, prominent in darkness, faded yet still present in Brightness. Hence the absolute importance of detail, keeping sound distinct and clear so they shine together. A bit like the brushstrokes in an Impressionist painting. Or even like the silk scarves Saariaho likes to wear with myriad water colour shades. But Orion is also a hunter, a Greek god who roams forests and kills his prey.  Beneath Saariaho's finest work there's decisiveness and strength, a firmness which underpins the creamy textures. Orozco-Estrada  gets Saariaho. He gets how the luminosity springs from refined detail, yet purposely forges ahead.


James Ehnes is the soloist in Sibelius Violin Concerto. The piece is so familiar, and so good, that average performances are bearable enough. But this seems intensely personal.   Despite his successes and prodigious talent as a composer, Sibelius would have liked to have been a violin virtuoso.  Ehnes's playing is sensitive, making me think about Sibelius, the man, full of self doubt. That insecurity, born perhaps because Sibelius was an empathic person, is for me why his music is so powerful. Get past the Finland symbolism and what Mahler called "national flavouring" and focus on the deeper personality within.

Brahms, too, is often misunderstood.  Does he imbibe the Beidermeyer certainity so prevalent of his age (and alas of ours).  Or is there a deeper Brahms beneath the bonhomie?  For that reason, while I enjoy conventionally Romantic Brahms, I much prefer performances which suggest something more complex. When Orozco-Estrada conducts Brahms, he makes the composer feel clear-minded and thoughtful, warmth and geniality.  Orozco-Estrada  gets the grand stride of Brahms, but also reminds us that grandness for its own sake is no measure of humanity.

Brahms Die schõne Magelone - Roderick Williams

Brahms Die schõne Magelone Op 33, (1861-8) at the Oxford Lieder Festival,on Tuesday, with Roderick Williams. Since this year's Oxford Lieder Festival focuses on poetry, and poetry in translation, chances are that Williams will be singing in English. This is ideal Roddy repertoire because he's such a direct, vivid communicator. That matters more than usual in Die schõne Magelone because its very form is florid romance. Although the song cycle is often performed with the spoken text Brahms included, I hope that, in Oxford, they'll be doing the text in translation, as it's integral to form and meaning.

Brahms chose fifteen songs and associated text from Ludwig von Tieck's Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone und des Grafen Peter von Provence (1796)  a hybrid narrative where long passages of prose blossom  into poetry at critical points. This form is part of meaning, since the tale is a saga of troubadours, for whom song was an indicator of knightly  status almost as much as tournaments and jousting. Tieck's source was a French legend, first published in German in Augsburg in 1535. Tieck's many adaptations of "medieval" sagas were highly influential  because they fueled the fashion for small "r"  romanticism of an idealized society as an alternative to the realities of the 19th century.

The prose also puts context to the songs, which as poems aren't as strong to stand alone as, say, the songs Josef von Eichendorff included in his Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1822-3) which were set as Lieder by Hugo Wolf. Interestingly, both of those literary works deal with the idea of a young man travelling to Italy - the "Dream of the South" so pervasive in the German |Romantic imagination., In Die schõne Magelone,  Graf Peter leaves home, inspired by song  and the vision of beauty he finds in Magalona the daughter of the King of Neapolis (Naples).  Read the full text in German  HERE and in English HERE   After many trials and tribulations, which include being captured by Turks, the lovers at last prevail.. If the story sounds familiar, think Torquato Tasso (1544-85) and Rinaldo. Or Weber Oberon, for that matter.

So in Die schõne Magelone the spoken passages of prose are fundamental. Indeed, a lot of the impact of a good performance lies in the way the text is recited.  This is literature, after all, the cadences and phrasings are a form of "music". Even if you don't know the words, they sound good and mysterious, and contribute a great deal to the atmosphere. It's not that hard to read a short synopsis before the recital and respond with the imagination. To leave the texts out, simply because English-speaking audiences don't care, panders to the dumbed-down, though it's fair enough in some situations. .An English translation is a reasonable compromise. 

Bychkov Vienna Philharmonic Brahms Franz Schmidt Prom 73

In Prom 73, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Semyon Bychkov conducted the Vienna Philharonic Orchestra. The  VPO are so good that they don't need a Chief Conductor. Music seems to flow from them, channeled and shaped in partnership with those who have conducted them. Their aura is unique, built upon flawless technique and innate, intuitive musicianship on all levels.  Claudio Abbado, who conducted them regularly, once said "Music is an ongoing process, a constant quest, a quest for new forms of music-making, a permanent state of enrichment."  Listening to the Vienna Philharmonic is proof, if any were needed, that dedication and vision of this calibre refreshes the soul.

In the opening movement of Brahms Symphony no 3 Op 90, 1883, Allegro con brio, the motif at its heart was clearly defined. "Frei aber einsam", Free although alone. the confidence of a protagonist mature enough not to need to prove anything. This symphony is a model of restraint, each movement returning to quiet understatement.  Bychkov and the VPO shaped the long keening lines in the second and third movements so they seemed to express a melancholy longing for something which might never be regained. One hardly needs to know the Schumann connotations when the piece is interpreted with such insight and sensitivity. Thus the intense figures in the final movement were marked forceful, sharp stabbing rhythms suggesting determination. Trombones, horns and bassoons, instruments with big voices, yet played with sensitivity.  Lovely  as it was with the VPO, they understood that this Allegro isn't "light", but carries deep emotional undertones. Listening link HERE.

It was a great pity that the performance was spoiled live in the auditorium because after the first movement the ushers let in large numbers of people who hadn't checked  that the Prom started at 7pm not 7.30, yet were allowed to enter the hall noisily, disturbing others who had come for the music. It didn't help that Bychkov seemed to be under the weather, mopping his brow a lot, but that is his privilege. Audiences who actually care about music listen, and shouldn't burst into mechanical applause at every pause. Serious music isn't TV talent show, it doesn't depend on mindless approval. Ironically, this "audience participation" reinforced the insight  in the Bychkov/VPO  interpretation.

It was a wise choice to pair this Brahms 3 with Franz Schmidt's Symphony no 2  (1913). Comparing a composer to one more familiar is fair enough, but it's far more important to listen to music for its own sake.  The better the composer, the more individual he (or she) will sound.  This symphony is most certainly not a pastiche. Ultimately labels close minds and ears.  Schmidt was very much an individual of his time, cognizant with a wide range of others.  Although this particular symphony isn't as well known as the superior "Book of Seven Seals", Schmidt's Symphony no 4 was a huge success at the Proms  in 2000. Schmidt is not obscure and was very much a part of the period in which he was active. Bychkov clearly loves the piece and conducts it with such enthusiasm that he makes it convincing.  He's been conducting it everywhere in the last few years, even leading the student orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music in it last March. When, not if, he records this, it will become the version to get hold of.

Schmidt's Second Symphony spans three movements. The first movement, marked Lebhaft, was lively, with an interesting interplay between confident brass and  playful strings and winds. The VPO played the expansive lines with a great sense of freedom, and the pastoral passages shone with lyrical grace. In the hands of lesser performers  one might detect an uncertainty in the resolution, but with Bychkov and the VPO, the sound is so gorgeously rich that one can luxuriate without worrying too much.  The second movement,, marked "einfach und zart" (simple and tender) is a series of variations, each quite distinctive. Bychkov and the VPO kept tempi flowing, to accentuate the spirited exuberance. Do we hear the ghosts of the Johann Strausses (Not Richard) ? The final movement begins with an impressive brass and wind chorale, which gradually grows to introduce a variation on the woodwind theme in the first movement.  Listening link HERE.

In the final coda,the fanfare surges again, a blaze of glory,played with such richness that it would be wrong to quibble about emotional depth.  Rather like, I thought, the last gasp of the old world before it was annihilated in 1914-1918. Far too much nonsense has been written about Schoenberg forcing music into modernism.  It was the War What Did  It!  And the Nazis, and the inexorable process of artists responding to the times they live in. The twelve tone system opened up new possibilities, it didn't suppress anyone.   The huge variety of styles which proliferated in the 1920's, 30's and beyond is clear evidence that composers can do their own thing. And thus, we return to the singular depth of Brahms Symphony no 3 as revealed by Bychkov and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.   

Coming up next - The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a brilliant Elgar Gerontius

Triumphant Triumphlied Brahms Prom 62 OAE

Brahms Triumphlied triumphed at the all-Brahms Prom 62 at the Royal Albert Hall,  London, with Marin Alsop, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, the Choir of the Enlightement and soloist Benjamin Appl. Brahms's Triumphlied (Op 55, 1872) was written to mark the first unification of Germany, and the defeat of France, which hitherto had dominated the European balance of power. The British weren't keen either, since the new nation competed with British industry, trade and naval control.  The 1914-1918  War was a direct result of this rivalry. Triumphlied wasn't ever going to be popular in such circumstances. But no nation has a monopoly on nationalism. Now perhaps we have the historical perspective to hear the piece in context and appreciate its merits.

The first unification of Germany marked the fulfilment of the Romantic dream of a nation no longer torn apart by hundreds of warring states. Significantly, Brahms chose his text from The Book of Revelation in the Bible, focusing on Chapter 19, where a vast multitude gather to celebrate a cosmic marriage (unity) . Hence the jubilant Allelujas and the punchy, optimistic rhythms. Brahms is celebrating hope after struggle. The different threads in the chorus and orchestra interweave, like garlands.Beautifully precise part singing.  In Revelation, a white horse appears in the skies,  with eyes of fire, bearing a horsemen who represents the King of Kings. Out of the tumult, the solo baritone's voice rises, clear and forceful. Despite his youth, Benjamin Appl already has a huge following. I've kept missing his appearance, but now I can hear why he has impressed so many. He doesn't have much to sing in Triumphlied, but he makes those moments ring out gloriously. Listen to him next at the Oxford Lieder Festival in October.

Brahms Alto Rhapsody (Op 53, 1869)  made an interesting contrast to the Triumphlied.  Here Brahms chose his text from an excerpt from Goethe Harzreise im Winter. The soloist, this time a mezzo soprano (Jamie Barton), is again surrounded by large orchestra and chorus, yet the mood is desolate. The solo part is much more dominant, moving slowly and purposefully over the forces behind her. Jamie Barton has one of those big voices that impress. She won the BBC Singer of the World in Cardiff and the Richard Tucker Prize more recently. She has a nice, rich voice but needs to work on her diction. The Alto Rhaspsody is one of the finest vehicles for resplendent mezzo and contralto voices. Kathleen Ferrier, Christa Ludwig, Janet Baker,  Brigitte Fassbender, and Alice Coote  (First Night of the Proms 2009) set almost impossibly high standards for any young singer. 

Framing the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody were  the purely orchestral Academic Festival Overture and Brahms Symphony no 1 in C minor.  The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are a n excellent orchestra, and Brahms is a composer Marin Alsop usually does well.  Last year at the Proms, they did Brahms German Requiem together. Like the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody, the German Requiem predicates on the singing. The non vocal [pieces in this prom didn't quite come alive,  but we should be glad for the Choir of the Enlightenment.

Florian Boesch Wigmore Hall Schumann Liederkreis op 39

For my review of the Schumann Liederkreis op 39 recital in November 2017 (Justus Zeyen) please read HERE  Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall, a superb culmination to their year's residency at the world's finest Lieder venue.  On the eve of Robert Schumann's 205th birthday, the highlight of this recital was Schumann's Liederkreis op 39, A masterful performance, beautifully paced and nuanced. But Boesch performances are outstanding because he brings exceptional emotional commitment to what he sings.  Lieder is, and always has been, an intellectual art, even though it might be fashionable  in some circles to play down the depth that goes into Lieder, as opposed to fashionable easy listening.  Anyone can enjoy Lieder as song, but a truly good Lieder recital is interactive, challenging the listener and makes him or her think, even, or especially in, familiar repertoire. 

As always, with Schumann, the quality of poetry defines the music. The poet in Liederkreis op 39  is Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857), a key figure in Prussian intellectual circles, an aristocrat but also a practical man of enlightenment who helped create the very high standards that marked Prussian education. Eichendorff was also a devout Catholic. Not for him the irony of Heinrich Heine.  Eichendorff's most famous book, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, is worth reading for it encapsulates the idea that simplicity can be wisdom.  Taugenichts  is a gardener who falls in love with a princess.  But think, what kind of humble gardener travels to Italy in pursuit of his dreams?  The novel unfolds in a series of songs (some set by Hugo Wolf), but the pastoral lightness disguises its depth. If a gardener can win a princess simply by  being a good man, there's hope for all good people.

Schumann's setting of Waldesgespräch is magical. "Es ist schon spät, es ist schon kalt ". We feel just as entranced by the beauty of the maiden in the dark forest as the protagonist who assumes she's a kind of human prey which he can take home and marry: Golaud and Mélisande avant le lettre. Significantly, the piano introduction is brief and direct. We're thinking as the man. Then , softer, rolling figures which might suggest water or tumbling golden tresses. The maiden warns, "Du weiss nicht, wer ich bin". Suddenly the hunter realizes "Du bist die Hexe, Lorelei."   Boesch and Martineau respect the way Schumann marks the difference between male and female, literalness and mystery. Boesch didn't need to mimic a woman's voice but simply softened his timbre: the real horror here is not the Lorelei but what will happen to the man.. Firmly, Boesch sang "Nimmermehr!" and with a haunted tone  "nimmermehr auf diesem Wald", Martineau played the lyrical,postlude so beautifully that we, too are drawn into the nightmare. He played that last, sudden, decisive chord so that it fell with the chill of death.

Zweilicht is even more pointed. Languid, flowing lines suggest the beauty of twilight  and the promise of slumber. But beware! The night is deceptive, revealing secret dangers.  Hunters are roaming the forests, their Waldhorns "hin und weider wandern". Boesch 's voice descended into whisper. The final line is spoken, without ornamentation. "Hüte dich" said Boesch, Martineau adding a single note  as exclamation point. "Blieb wach und munter" is followed by three firm, unequivocal chords. The message is clear. This poem is a good example of the Romantiker fascination with what we'd now call the subconscious: anything but "romantic" in the small "r" sense of the word.

Thus we are prepared for the miniature psychodrama that is Im Walde. The pianom part is ecstatic, describing a wedding procession in the mountains, escorted by men on horses, blowing trumpets.
Birds are singing. "Da war ein lustiges Jagen" ("what a merry hunt")  sang Boesch,, observing the jaunty musical line, yet managing to impart the brutal implications of what's really going on,. Before the poet has time to think, night falls, hiding everything from sight.  "Und mich's schauert's im Herzengrunde". Eichendorff gives no specific reason for this intense sense of foreboding. Shouldn't weddings be happy?  The quietness with which Boesch delivered the phrase was chilling. Does the alpha male violence of the hunt hint at horrors too frightening to articulate?

Perhaps Boesch and Martineau might have chosen Hugo Wolf's settings of Eichendorff with which to begin this Wigmore Hall recital, but they did a selection of eight songs from Wolf's  Italian Songbook., a good idea because this created greater contrast. The Italienisches Liederbuch is not a narrative cycle. It doesn't "tell a story".  Each song is a vignette which stands on its own. Some years ago, Boesch sang the collection with Miah Persson.  This time the songs served as an introduction to Brahms Vier ernste Lieder, a truly integrated cycle, Brahm'ss final meditation on the meaning of life. It was written in the wake of the death of Clara Schumann, Brahms must have been remembering the feelings he had for her,and for Robert Schumann, so many years before. This is one of the most powerful and moving pieces in the entire Lieder repertoire. Boesch sang it with exactly the dignified, clear-sighted affirmation it needs, sincere and direct. Brahms was looking at death without maudlin sentimentality.  This was one of the most interesting interpretations I've heard, and I've heard many.  This performance was so good that I can't do it justice here in a  review that must centre on Schumann,  It's worth a much more detailed analysis, but I think Boesch and Martineau will be doing it again in the near future.

The photo above belongs to the BBC and is used here under the terms of Fair Use. It's a wonderful choice because it illustrates the lucid, down-to-earth nature of Boesch and Martineau's artistic personalities.  That's why they are such great musicians!

The Cleveland Orchestra Welser-Möst Brahms Proms London

The Cleveland Orchestra, with Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, made a most welcome return to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.  Are the Clevelanders the best orchestra in the United States today? Their two Proms certainly made the case. Superlative finesse and poise, generated by genuine musicality.  The classical music world is international these days. Thanks to the internet, anyone, anywhere can listen to the best on offer. Orchestras can't rest on their laurels but must offer something unique. The Cleveland Orchestra is world-class, thank in no small part to Welser-Möst and his exacting standards. When orchestras and opera houses are imploding all round, Cleveland should be proud of what it has.

Classical elegance, too,  in the way the two programmes dovetailed : Brahms Symphonies no 1 and 2, preceded by Brahms Academic Festival Overture and Tragic Overture. Classical elegance is a much underrated virtue. Far too often  noise, bluster and commercialized tat substitute for well-crafted sensitivity. Welser-Möst and the Clevelanders evoke an aesthetic very much attuned to the values of 19th century Austria. This Brahms Symphony no 1 in C minor, op. 68 reminded me of Mozart, such was its freshness and clarity. This approach gives Brahms greater respect than the usual clichés about Beethoven. Brahms was very much an original in his own right, not Beethoven manqué. Such was the purity of this performance that I thought of Brahms the composer of chamber music, songs and works for piano. The larger themes thus felt like a natural development, a totally Brahmsian resolution, as personal as Ein Deutsches Requiem or the Alto Rhapsody. The ghost of Wagner towers so heavily over European music that it's salutary to hear Brahms as the pure soul of German and Austrian tradition. Perhaps that was the point of starting with the  Academic Festival Overture. Brahms, with his droll, down-to-earth groundedness, isn't Wagner or Beethoven, but himself.  [One of the big wars in music history was Wasgner versus Brahms. Maybe Wagner won since so many now expect to hear Brahms with a Wagner flavour. But Brahms  entire symphonic output adds up to one Wagner opera, and Wagner's non opera output pales in comparison with Brahms. All the more treason .that Welser-Möst's Brahms deserves respect]
 

Welser-Möst and the Clevelanders created Brahms Symphony no 2 in D op 73 with a similar sense of style. Brisk, agile playing created a sense of freedom  - no buttoned-up regression here!  The darker timbres in the second movement  suggested sensuality or mystery, rather than malice, adding nice resonance to the final movement's heady con spirito. Glorious brass playing - Cleveland's famed showpiece is alive and well.  What wit to pair this symphony with the growling Tragic Overture. creating a vivid contrast.  In August (Prom 53)  Iván Fischer conducted the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Brahms Symphonies no 3 & 4.  Usually Fischer is very impressive, but that performance sounded oddly subdued, almost as if Brahms was being submerged under the weight of much later performance practice.  Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Oirchestra presented Brahms with much greater flair, showing why Brahms's originality stunned Arnold Schoenberg, one of his greatest admirers.

Between the Brahms pieces at these two Proms, the Cleveland Orchestra played Jörg Widmann, Flûte en suite  and Teufel Amor. Widmann is very well known in London, as composer, clarinettist and brother of Carolin Widmann the violinist. Flûte en suite was written for the Cleveland Orchestra's principal flute, Joshua Smith. It's delightfully whimsical, allowing Smith to display his virtuosity, while maintaining good-natured common sense - a very Brahmsian touch. Widmann plays with the idea of Bach counterpoint, balancing soloist with orchestra. At the end, Bach takes over, with a direct, extended quote from Bach's Badinerie, as if Bach has won through after all. In lesser hands, the joke might fall flat, but Smith and the Clevelanders understand the humour.  Widmann's Teufel Amor unfolds with darker portent. It's filled with brooding incident, narrating a story without words. A good new direction.

[Further to a private discussion, I think Brahms symphonies aren't "box office" esp not without the accretions of saccharine syrup many people expect.  Furthermore two matching programmes might make artistic good sense but audiences don't necessarily want art. The Clevelanders might have nmade more money doing Copland or whatever but I respect them for choosing artistic good values]

Brahms A German Requiem Prom 47

Hearing The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play Brahms' German Requiem  with Marin Alsop, restored its true period context. Brahms uses texts from the Bible, but, being a non-believer, didn't write a conventionally pious Mass.  Ein deutsches Requiem is just that, A German Requiem. Brahms looks back on North German tradition, and by extension to the whole spirit of the Reformation. In pious, obedient Catholic Austria, that in itself suggests rugged independence of spirit. Period instruments create lighter, cleaner textures, evoking the spirit of Protestant piety. "Brahms free of the thick veneer of varnish", I wrote many years ago about a particularly powerful Vier ernste Gesänge. The same would apply to this OAE performance. I would have liked even greater asperity but this was the Proms where you have to think about the wide spectrum of audience expectations. Besides, I'm immersed in the Salzburg Meistersinger (review to come soon) and its perceptive take on German traditions. I keep hearing  "Johannes Brahms, Johannes Brahms" instead of "Johannes Sachs".

Claire Seymour reviewed Prom 47 Brahms Requiem in Opera Today. "Alsop consistently gave the text — garnered by the composer himself from Luther’s German Bible and from the Apocrypha — room to speak without undue force, and the result was a remarkably intense quietude matched elsewhere by an equally dignified and moving radiance"....

"The second movement, ‘Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras’ (For all flesh is as grass), began with fateful gravity, the timpani’s dark, funereal pulses sensitively articulated by Adrian Bending. Legend has it that a pre-premiere run-through of the first three movements of the Requiem were somewhat sabotaged by the relentless fortissimo pounding of an over-enthusiastic timpanist; here, and throughout the work, Bending offered a master-class in percussion playing, achieving tense restraint, insistent power, and building to perfectly judged, thrilling climaxes. The movement roved through alternating passages of despair and resignation before the Choir’s grandiloquent outburst, ‘Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Weigkeit’ (But the Word of the Lord endureth for ever)." Read the whole review HERE.

Big B's at the Barbican and how to get them

Big B's at the Barbican 2013-14 season - Berlioz, Brahms, Bruckner, Britten, Birtwistle, Beethoven and even a bit of Boulez. Now that the booklet is out, we can look more closely at what's on offer with the caveat - be aware! All venues do complex multi buys but plan this Barbican.

Brahms is straightforward enough. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly are doing all four Brahms symphonies at the end of October, each juxtaposed with concerto works. With performers like this and soloists like Leonidas Kavakos, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Arcadi Volodos, you can't go wrong. Two string quartets concerts too. .Prices up to £65 per person per main concert. It's not cheap but with quality like this, you can't really expect gimmioks. It will be good to hear Chailly and the Leipzigers traverse Brahms, especially as they're spacing their concerts with rest time between, a relief after their rushed Beethoven symphony series.

Programming for Berlioz is more diffuse. Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in four concerts. For me, the key concerts will be The Damnation of Faust (3 & 7th Nov) and Roméo et Juliette (6th & 13th Nov), because the casts are very good indeed - Olga Borodina, Ildar Abdrazakov asnd Michael Spyres. Gergiev's approach to Roméo et Juliette is likely to be completely different to Mark Elder's OAE performance in 2012 (read analysis here), but part of the way we get deeper into repertoire is by hearing alternative takes. You can book discounts thru LSO multibuy for these, but if you want to go to Berlioz L'enfance du Christ on 15/12 you'll need to book thru the BBCSO multibuy.

In May 2014, the Barbican celebrates Birtwistle at 80. Birtwistle is easily Britain's most significant composer since Britten (though some might say since Purcell). Two concert stagings of his operas Gawain and Yan Tan Tethera (16/5/14 and 29/5/14).  Martyn Brabbins, Leigh Melrose and John Tomlinson in the former. Baldur Brönnimann, Roderick Williams, Claire Booth, Andrew Kennedy in the latter. In addition, Daniel Harding conducts Birtwistle's seminal Earth Dances on 20/5 with the LSO, Oliver Knussen conducts an all-Birtwistle programme which includes Silbury Air on 25/5. Brönnimann conducts another concert on 30/5 where Birtwistle features with Holst and RVW. The secret to discounts lies with the orchestras. Harding's concert is part of the LSO series but Brönnimann's second concert is part of the Britten Sinfonia series. No discounts for the operas or the BCMG/Knussen concerts. Since all of these together form a kind of "Total Immersion" they are all worth going to regardless of price.At a time when the arts face cuts, we in the audience had better be prepared to support what we care for.

The Benjamin Britten series is the one to be vigilant about. Some of the concerts are absolute essentials, Ian Bostridge is singing Britten's Our Hunting Fathers on 8/11/13. This is one of the keys into Britten's soul. Britten's music is sometimes hard to take because he's emotionally oblique, but that surface reserve hides intense spiritual turbulence. Britten without bite isn't Britten. We need to hear the wild oceans and surreal nightmares in his music: they inform the tightness of his idiom. Bostridge comes closer to anyone else, including Peter Pears, to accessing the darkest, deepest levels of Britten's inner world. When Bostridge sings Britten he isn't "easy listening" and smooth. But then, Britten isn't either. In this centenary year we need more than ever to connect to Britten beneath the surface, and to understand just how radical he really is.

Bostridge is also singing The Madwoman in Britten's Curlew River on 14 and 16/5 at St Giles Cripplegate. Curlew River is an extremely disturbing work on many levels. It uses Japanese and medieval European form to deal with a subject so traumatic that it can't, perhaps, be dealt with other than in this indirect, stylized way. It's also a piece that needs to be experienced rather than simply listened to. Hence the performance will take place in a church, augmented by a multi media staging by Netia Jones, who understands Britten's aesthetic.

Britten's 100th birthday on 22/11 is being celebrated by The Sixteen with a  programme of Britten choral pieces, while Steuart Bedford, a Britten associate, is conducting Albert Herring with the BBC SO on 23/11, The really high profile spectacular will be a performance of the War Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall on 30./11. Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBCSO, soloists are Marina Poplavskaya, Andrew Kennedy and Roderick Williams. This will almost certainly be broadcast, either on BBC Radio 3 or on TV, it's that important, but you want to be part of it live and tell your grandchildren.

Now for the pricing catch. The Barbican  heavily advertises  an "Illuminating Britten" weekend on 8-10/11 for £95 which gives you a 20% discount on tickets for the concert on 8/11 and to a programme of dances to Britten's music at the Barbican Theatre. No discounts to the other concerts mentioned above, particularly the War Requiem, except for Albert Herring which is part of the BBCSO multibuy. What is "illuminating Britten"?  It's "three days of concerts, films, mini-recitals and discussions featuring those...who have a special understanding of Britten's music. Curated by film maker John Bridcut." It sounds very similar to other composer events, like the Knussen, Elliott Carter,, George  Benjamin and other Immersion weekends in recent years,  except that it costs lots more and you have to pay full price for the really big concerts. Bridcut is a genius at marketing, but  that also means that anyone into Britten has already seen the films, read the books and heard some of the music.

 Like it or not, but if we want culture, we're going to have to take some responsibility for paying. 
PS Thanks to Ri ch for the great photo !

Unusual Partners? Jurowski LPO Zimmermann Brahms

For their second concert on the theme of human suffering, Vladimir and The London Philharmonic Orchestra presented Brahms German Requiem with Bernd Alois Zimmermann Ich wandte mich um und sah an alles Unrecht (Ecclesiastical Action). Unusual partners. But what they share is a deeply felt concern for the human condition.  So much of the Unrecht (injustice) of this world haopens because people deny others the right to exist. The least we can do can do is listen.

Zimmermann's  Ich wandte mich um und sah an alles Unrecht (Ecclesiastical Action) opens with baleful blasts of trumpets and trombones, suggesting the Biblical connection. Part of the text comes from Ecclesiates Ch 4 but the mood is apocalyptic. One can think of Messaien Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (read more here), The brass forms great arcs of sound reaching into space, a reference to the Final Trumpet of the Last Judgement?  Zimmermann uses a large orchestra but colours are used in stark black and white contrast, powerful blasts of sound against tiny barely audible detail. Zimmermann embeds meaning into his musical form. The two speakers  (Omar Ebrahim and Malcolm Sinclair) quote text from Ecclesiates, which the central figure transforms into strange, incantation. What he represents is not of this world.

Zimmermann then employs the tale of the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Christ has returned to Earth, and is imprisoned as a madman. The two speakers come at the central figure on all sides, but the Prisoner remains silent. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Satan proposed that He use his powers to end evil. Why should mankind suffer if God can change things?  "But You would not deprive humanity of its freedom".

The Grand Inquisitor (Speaker 2) cannot comprehend.  "I swear mankind is weaker and more worthless than You could ever have imagined?" UN REST, CON FUSION, MIS FORTUNE this is the lot of mankind, " Sinclair spits out savagely (it's even more effective in German)  "oh for many centuries the chaos of man's free thinking". The emphases are in Zimmermann's score, for he uses the shape of sound to suggest the speaker's dilemma. For a man of temporal power, faith in the flawed "children" of  humanity is plain illogical. Can he understand why The Prisoner kisses him as he is released? The speakers shout staccato, disjointed phrases, which express their confusion.

A long, cataclysmic chord rises, to overwhelming crescendo. Each section of the orchestra explodes - tubular bells are struck, the strings whizzing and whirring, the woodwinds wailing. It'a as if the heavens are being ripped apart, yet Jurowski maintains tight control, focussing the energy into meaning, for there is method behind this supposed madness.  Up to this point, The Prisoner (Or Christ) hasn 't said much, so the metallic dryness in Dietrich Henschel's voice is appropriate. Now, though, the bass part launches into an extremely difficult vocalize, where pitch and rhythm oscillate. Because there are no words, we have to listen for the emotional inflections in the voice. There are two recordings of this piece - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Andreas Schmidt - which show how much the individuality of the performer fills out where words can't suffice. Henschel creates intensity, but relatively little coloration.

As the "normality" they represent collapses, their words gradually disintegrates, though phrases can be heard, "Man does not live by bread alone". They lapse into formal, mechanical gestures. Even the conductor has to stand down from the podium in symbolic renunciation. This isn't gesture for its own sake, but integral to the meaning of the piece. Jurowski has no problem assuming the lotus position with hands across his face. I''ve been told that he's a practising Buddhist, so maybe he knows why his face is covered, prayer-like, at this point. Muffled voices are heard, coming from members of the orchestra, indicating perhaps that Christ's message is understood by some of the common folk, at least. 

In the baritone's second solo, words like "Weh!" and "Allein"  and "Wer" are uttered in multiple variations. You need to listen carefully to piece the phrase together but that is the whole point : if we think, then we deserve the freedom Christ believed in.  (For ease of reference, it's "Woe to him that is alone when he falleth").  Then suddenly Jurowski leaps up and conducts the short but intense finale, a quotation from the Bach chorale Es ist genug. Trumpets and trombones blare but this feels different to the fanfare at the beginning. What does Zimmermann mean?  Hope or abandoned hope? Six days later, he committed suicide.

Johannes Brahms. German Requiem also takes its cue from the Bible, but not from conventional Christian piety. The choral part is glorious, but some of the impact was muted by less than perfect diction. The London Philharmonic Choir are reliable, and were pleasant enough, but on this occasion the honours went to the London Philharmonic Orchestra.  Jurowski's pace was contemplative and serene - a necessity, I think, after Zimmermann. This time we could hear the German Requiem as a resolution to the anguish that went before, though Brahms is too strong-minded to be soothing..

Jurowski emphasized details lovingly. In  Denn alles Flesich es ist wie Gras. the winds were particularly lush and verdant, which made Henschel's singing seem dry in comparison, though that worked well in Herr, lehre doch mich, but less so Denn wir haben keinen bliebende Statt, where his voice didn't glow in the critical word "Geheimnis". Still, it had been a long evening for him. Miah Persson sang Ich habe nun Traurigkeit sweetly, like an angel.


photo credit : Chris Christodoulou, IMG