Schoenberg Gurrelieder : Salonen Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall

Schoenberg Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, demonstrating how well the Philharmonia Orchestra has absorbed Schoenberg's idiom. A blazing performance, formidably dramatic, executed with stunning assurance.  Salonen has made his mark on the Philharmonia, through in-depth explorations of the 20th century repertoire he loves so well. After their first Gurrelieder with him in March 2009, I was at an airport where many of the players were talking excitedly about Gurrelieder and the way Salonen worked with them.   Musicians can be blasé (at least on the surface), but these players were genuinely enthusiastic. And they didn't know that I was listening in !

The deep surging undercurrents in the Prelude, lit by bright sparkling figures, seemed almost to vibrate.  Well-defined the strings, harps and horns introduced the dream-like mood, textures gradually build up in sweeping arcs, string lines swelling and heaving.  Perhaps Schoenberg had in mind Tristan und Isolde, or Siegfried's journey down the Rhine. Either way, vast cosmic forces are being invoked.. Or can we hear echoes of Verklärte Nacht writ infinitely larger ? Schoenberg then  introduces the mortals, King Waldemar (Robert Dean Smiith) and Tove (Camilla Tilling).   The parts are tricky to cast, since Schoenberg, in his youth, pits the singers against huge orchestral forces.   Yet voice along doesn't create a part.  Simon O'Neill, for example, doesn't have a pretty voice but more than compensates with artistry and insight.  Waldemar was anti-hero enough that he dares curse God : a Flying Dutchman of sorts. Dean Smith didn't quite have the heft or gift for characterization, so this Waldemar came across in milder form, though the music  around him roared with passion.  Tilling created a refined Tove,   her lines soaring gracefully, serving the part well.  Few Tove's are truly "wunderliche" but Tilling is attractive, as gentle as a dove. Tove is silenced, but the Wood Dove takes her place.

The Wood Dove, a much stronger personage than Tove,  is an Erda  figure, who sees all, and the mood is almost incantation.  .  Michelle DeYoung was ideal,  her rich timbre enhanced by sombre dignity.  The recurring line "Weit flog ich....."  rose forcefully from the surging undercurrents, bringing out the rhythmic flow.  Every good performances helps us think more about the music.  This time I was pondering how the Wood Dove's music might resemble Sprechstimme.  A pity that the "Herrgott ! Herrgott!" part didn't have quite the impact in the Royal Festival Hall as it could have. The front oif that stage sucks voices into the void even if you've got a voice-friendly seat.  On the BBC Radio 3 broadcast, Dean Smith's can be heard with better balance.  In the orchestra, however, the "Herrgott!" chords were magnificent, executed so they seemed to have a metallic quality, like hammerblows striking stone. 

A haunted, baleful  introduction to the final part, when the orchestra seemed to explode with the horror of the apocalyptic vision being described.  Trombones wailed, percussion rumbled, strings evoking a sense of wind and wildness. Waldemar and his doomed knights are riding theough the sky.  Another excellent cameo with David Soar's Peasant. The firmness in Soar's timbre suggested that even a doughty peasant can be so shaken that he must bolt his door and pray.  The Philharmonia Voices were augmented by the male voices of the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.In the relatively small space of the Royal Festival Hall, the impact could have been overwhelming, but under the direction of Aidan Oliver,  what came over was clarity, not sheer volume. Good articulation, the "Holla!"'s wild, the sudden descent into near silence  chilling.  Yet again, the orchestra set the scene. The strings surged, then opened out to strangely disturbing calm, the woodwinds adding quirky menace.   Despite the turbulence around him, Waldemar is alone.

Thus the spooky interlude before Klaus-Narr sings, cloaking the part with surreal horror.  Wolfgang Ablinger Sperrhacke is one of the finest "Character" singers in the business, so this cameo, like Michelle DeYoung's Wood Dove, was a major highlight.  Ablinger-Sperrhacke captured the strange, disjointed rhythms in the part extremely well, the "fool" easily the match of the orchestra.   Perhps Waldemar is the fool, still obsessed by ."Ich und Tove, wir sind eins", oblivious to his predicament.   Thus the brooding in the orchestra before the male choirs returned, textures subdued yet uncowed.  "Ins Grab! Ins Grab!"  A particularly good Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind,  tubas booming, let by high winds, with chamber-like delicacy in the playing.   The role of the Speaker is usually cast with a singer whose voice is past its bloom, but whose musical instincts are still strong enough to declaim with Sprechstimme intonation.  Some of the great singers of the past have done the Speaker so he/she feels like a ghost from the past, revived, like Waldemar and his Knights, a thoughtful insight. Barbara Sukova is an actress with musical nous,  whose voice is still fairly youthful, so her Speaker was different, closer perhaps to Klaus-Narr commenting on the spectres, as opposed to being one of them, which is perfectly valid.  A blazing Seht die Sonne! and the audience in the Royal Festival Hall went wild.  In orchestral terms, this was an outstanding Gurrelieder,  Salonen and the Philhrmonia delivering with insight and understanding. 

Glorious Gurrelieder : Simon Rattle brings Schoenberg to the Proms

Prom 46, Schoenberg Gurrelieder with Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, Simon O'Neill, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Karen Cargill, Peter Hoare, Christopher Purves and Thomas Quasthoff.  And three wonderful choirs - the CBSO Chorus, the London Symphony Chorus and Orfeó Català from Barcelona, with Chorus Master Simon Halsey, Rattle's close associate for 35 years.  No wonder tickets almost sold out as soon as they went on sale. Everyone in town seemed to be there. Thomas Quasthoff sat in the coffee shop, holding court with friends and fans. Simon Rattle got cheered when he came in  sight on the stage, still in street clothes, by Prommers who were already seated half an hour early. 

Gurrelieder is a spectacular so extravagant that, for maximum effect, it needs to be experienced in a performing space where the vast forces can let rip in all their glory.  Rattle has conducted it many times in many places,  but there's nothing like the Royal Albert Hall for sensational presence, so he was able to unleash the full forces of Gurrelieder without inhibition.  For Gurrelieder is meant to be overwhelming, Waldemar defies God, who wreaks cosmic vengeance. He and his men are doomed to spend eternity riding through the night in a hunt. The peasants (here a single symbolic figure) are terrified by the supernatural, but Klaus-Narr, being a Fool, can recognize the ghosts for what they are - cosmic forces, and the demonic power of Nature.

Gurrelieder starts with a rhapsodic prelude, string lines swelling and heaving, harps adding warmth, woodwinds delicate, naturalistic touches. The reference is probably Siegfried's Journey down the Rhine, for Waldemar is about to embark on a journey of destiny.  Like Siegfried, Waldemar spends his innocence hunting in the woods, where Tove is concealed.  Hence the Wood Dove, like the Wood Dove in Siegfried, an all-seeing avatar.  Dense forests, in Germanic culture, symbolize powerful, though sinister, primeval forces.  The subconscious, source of creativity and danger.   Gurrelieder is  song symphony of Wagnerian proportions.  Simon O'Neill, being a very experienced Wagnerian, brought dramatic authority to the role. Waldemar is no Tristan but a king who thinks he can throw curses at God. If anything, he's a Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the seas forever.  O'Neill's Waldemar is an embattled soul, tormented and defiant, instinctively understanding the part.  Waldemar is not a Romantic Hero, but a man cursed, struggling against Fate. Thus the roles of Waldemar and Tove, though well written musically, aren't particularly well developed in  terms of psychological complexity.  For Schoenberg, they are figures in a landscape, who will become incorporated into Nature and nature legend around them.  Nonetheless, Eva-Maria Westbroek created Tove with great vocal depth,  and Karen Cargill sang the Wood Dove, a bird of darker portent than Siegfried's wood dove.

Schoenberg was only twenty-six when he wrote what was to become the First Part of Gurrelieder, but in the interim, he developed a highly original identity. In Part Two, the harps still sing, but the sweeping strings are broken by fearsome chords  which replicate the word "Herrgott! Herrgott!" which O'Neill sang with intense flourish.  Note the text, carefully.  Waldemar accepts his fate, but frames it as a creative destiny.   He chides God. "Das heisst Tyran, nicht Herrscher sein!". Like any earthly king, God needs Fools to keep him in order. Thus the significance of Klaus-Narr and of the Narrator, both figures who can see beyond events and guess significance.  In the years between the time Schoenberg began writing Gurrelieder and completing it, he developed a distinct creative identity. The true artist, as innovator, will often be alone, even vilified, but artistic integrity is paramount.  thus "Lass mich, Herr, die Kappe deines Hofnarrn tragen!".

The peasant (Christopher Purves) is horrified by the sight of Waldemar's Ghost Riders in the sky (complete with echoes of hunting horn).  His response is to hide, pray and bolt his door "noch Stahl und Stein, so kann mir nichts Böses zum Haus Herein!"  "Holla!" to all that.  The men's voices in the choirs sing a wild, rhythmic chorus, alternating explosive force with singing of hushed subtlety.  O'Neill sang Waldemar's "Mit Toves Stimme" so it rang out as an anthem: the  love that keeps Waldemar singing is like the inspiration an artists needs to create.


The music that introduces Klaus-Narr  is quirky but pointed, The Fool (Peter Hoare) is himself a ghost, serving his dead King in the same way that his king serves the God who doomed him.  Hoare let the lines curl round his tongue, spitting them out in line with the odd angular rhythms in the music. Waldemar will not be cowed.  Trumpets call, and hunting horns. Waldemar's still a huntsman and fighter who will  barge his way into Heaven. The huge chords in the orchestra return, but fade away, for dawn is about to break.  The Men's voices sang in dramatic hush as Waldemar's men sank back into the grave.  Rattle and the LSO created a haunting orchestral Prelude, settingb the tone for the entry of the Narrator (Thomas Quasthoff). Brooding somnolemce, eddies of quirky sound, like will o' the wisps illuminating darkness.   In many ways, the part is the heart and soul of the piece, for it's written as Sprechstimme, neither song nor speech, a device which Schoenberg was to make distinctively his own. This section is extraordinary, so unusual and so powerful that it leaves the listener stunned.  Quasthoff did the Narrator (and the Peasant) with Rattle in  Berlin in 2000.  Though he's long ceased singing, he can still act, and speak the part with a singer's ear for song.  It's quite a part. I will never forget hearing Hans Hotter do it way back in 1994, when he was already in his eighties.  And then the chorus exploded in that glorious "Seht die Sonne!"

This Prom was recorded for repeat online broadcast, and filmed for TV broadcast on September 3rd (BBC TV 4). 

This review also appears - with extra pics - in Opera Today

Photo: Roger Thomas

Wigmore Hall Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Intercontemporain

Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the great new music ensembles, made a welcome return to the Wigmore Hall  London, built around Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire,, with Salomé Haller. With characteristic wit, Ensemble Intercontemporain preceded Pierrot Lunaire with Luigi Dallapiccola Due studi (1946-7) and  Bruno Mantovani Carnaval for clarinet, piano and cello. (2014), enhancing the multiple connections between them. .

As a very young man, Luigi Dallapiccola heard Arnold Schoenberg  conduct Pierrot Lunaire in Florence in 1924.   In Due Studi, written 20 years later, Dallapiccola uses twelve-tone rows, but the influence of Pierrot Lunaire is much more subtle. There are two movements, Sarabanda and Fanfara e fuga.  Tight dialogue between Hae-Sun Kung (violin) and Hidéki Nagano (piano).

Ensemble Intercontemporain did the Wigmore Hall an honour by giving the world premiere of Bruno Mantovani's Carnaval for clarinet, piano and cello. (2014). which will be heard next week at the  Opéra Bastille.  Mantovani is a major figure in new music, greatly respected and widely performed, so this premiere was a significant event. Carnaval evolves over eight sections, each strikingly individual, yet written so tightly that the piece works, as a whole, like a powerful mechanism. "Clarinet and cello battle it out, their weapons adjacent notes - E and F -in a high register. Then they stop." writes Paul Griffiths in superb programme notes worthy of past standards at the Wigmore Hall  "The conflict, however remains, the two instruments  reiterating their points....with glissandos from the cello answered by arabesques from the clarinet". In the second section, the piano dominates, then withdraws as cello and clarinet soar in a heady maelstrom of flying quarter tones. ".....Dynamic wobbles and arpeggios.....luminous flurries and tremolandos are revisited before the music works back to a steady tempo"

Carnaval connects to Pierrot Lunaire in that it evolves through a series of different, and very individual "tableaux" to express something  that can't be articulated in speech but has strikingly vivid dramatic effect. The structure is tightly compressed, intensifying the sense of constant movement and sudden change. Disconcerting, but in a thrilling, satisfying way. Hopefully it will be performed again soon: hardly had the notes trailed off, than I wanted to hear it again, and again. It's that good. Jérôme Comte played the clarinet, Éric-Maria Couturier played the cello and Hidéko Nagano the piano - just three instruments, but they packed a powerful punch. 

When Salomé Haller entered for Pierrot Lunaire, it was almost immediately apparent that the performance would be neither wan nor pallid.  She didn't need to wear a Pierrot costume as did Albertine Zehme, the former actress who created the part for Schoenberg himself.  (See photo at right, where she's not in costume.)  Haller wore a dark suit with a glorious brooch of mother-of-pearl in the shape of two moons, one large, one smaller. At first, she simply presented the music as incantation. We were drawn into this surreal world as if by hypnosis, so that we were responding ourselves to what the songs might "mean" - a more creative process than listening passively. Haller began to "act", in much the way Sprechgesang isn't quite singing nor quite speech. This ambiguity worked well, suggesting stylized formality rather than realism. Is Pierrot real or a creation of the imagination  Who are these other personalities like the blasse Wässerin, the Dandy and the Madonna? The closer one gets to literal meaning, "das Bild des Glanzes zerfloß"

Pierrot Lunaire can turn the idea of narrative song upside down.  In this performance, what struck me was the relationship between voice and instruments that speak without words. Sophie Cherrier's flute sang, as flautists have sung for centuries, from Greek times to the present. When she exchanged flute for piccolo, the sound seemed even more ancient, even more plaintive.  This close relationship revealed the complex  structure that underpin's Schoenberg's creation. Wandering tonality and elusive images are held together on firm, orderly foundations. The songs don't work together as narrative, but reveal ideas constantly re-forming, and changing perspectives.

Schoenberg in London - WNO Moses und Aron

Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron at last returned to London. The Royal Opera House in fact gave the British premiere of the opera, in 1965.  In the present philistine artistic climate, would they dare value art over stupidity? We need the values of Moses und Aron more than ever.  Thank goodness ROH has sponsored the Welsh National Opera production, which itself dates from 2003. At least we in London get a chance to experience the opera live. House co-operations like this are a boon.
 
John Tomlinson sang Moses in the Met production eleven years ago. Moses, as the text tells us, is a man who doesn't express himself in words, so Tomlinson's powerful presence creates the right impact. Rainer Trost sang Aron, catching the true Sprechstimme cadences well. The opera is a dialectic between Moses and Aron, but the choruses provide ballast and background. Their music is wonderful. Sometimes they represent the voice of god, sometimes the voice of the people. I would have liked sharper, tighter diction but for non-German speakers this was good enough.  Good enough playing, with the WNO orchestra conducted by Lothar Koenigs. Although I hate it when people wail of any performance "It's not like the recording" in this case we have such a choice of outstanding recordings that if we compared like for like, this performance won't come near the top. But never mind. Just getting a chance to engage with Moses und Aron is a privilege.

Please read Mark Berry's review of Schoenberg Moses und Aron in Opera Today. It's the most detailed of all.

The original Stuttgart production looks a little dated now, but it's perfectly acceptable. Although the story comes from The Book of Exodus, when Schoenberg was writing in 1932 he may have been intuiting another kind of exodus. Moses believes in ideals that can't easily be put into words. Aron is his interpreter, much in the way a performer interprets what a composer sets onto paper. No need for tablets made of stone. Pocket scores will suffice.  And even these are meaningless unless the people engage with the content therein. But will the people care, or understand?  Will they prefer cheap thrills and easy answers? Yet, as Moses says, "Ich darf, und ich muss". He cannot compromise or lose his integrity.

There's plenty of nudity and sex in the libretto, but not in the production. The historical-reality crowd might prefer that, but the original directors  Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito,adhere to the spirit of that which cannot be expressed in direct images.  The People sit in what looks like a cinema, facing the audience in the auditorium, "watching" the golden calf in their imaginations, having vaguely impersonal orgies when they think they cant be observed. Much better this than gaudy special effects to distract from the moral power of the opera and the music. Indeed, the staging allows us to concentrate on the inner workings of the music. The naked women emerge vocally from the sprawl in the "theatre", their voices ringing out from the throng. So damn what if they're wearing anonymous clothes. Anyone with ears can pick them out clearly.  Moses und Aron is as much an opera about music as it is about faith.

The god of the Hebrews was austere, so holy that his name could not be spoken, whose presence could not be depicted in crass graven images. When Verdi Nabucco was staged last year at the Royal Opera House (read more here) some people went nuts because there wasn't enough gold and decoration. Surely such people must realize that the Hebrews chose the God of Moses, and not the graven images of Babylon? 

Welsh National Opera 2013-2014 analysis + touring

The Welsh National Opera 2013-2014 booklet has arrived. All operas can be heard at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff (pictured here, photo courtesy Thomas Deusing, San Antonio).  Although Cardiff is easily reached by train or road, many WNO productions tour, and the booklet's invaluable in tracking down what's on where.

The three Donizetti Tudor operas are being presented together : Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. Each is interesting in its own right but hearing them together as a trilogy will enhance their impact. It's a brilliant idea!  It would be pointless for Wales to upstage London in Britten year, someone at WNO deserves great praise. It's much more satisfying, I think, to immerse in depth like this. Besides, the Tudors were originally Welsh, so WNO is connecting to Welsh history even if it's through the ears of an Italian. Tosca is on, too, around the same time, for contrast. The series starts in September in Cardiff, running through October. The Donizetti triology is also touring to Swansea, Oxford, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Llandudno and Southampton.  It's not coming near London, so Londoners might want to study the Cardiff dates.

In Spring 2014, a series on "Fallen Women" :  Manon Lescaut, La Traviata and much more unusual Hans Werner Henze's Boulevard Solitude. Lothar Koenigs, Music Director at WNO, says "Alongside Britten, Henze is surely the most important representative of opera in the 20th century". Boulevard Solitude (1951) was last heard in the UK at ROH some ten years ago, though it's heard frequently in Germany. There's at least one DVD. The WNO production will, of course, be new. The director is Mariusz Trelinski. Boulevard Soiltude connects to Manon Lescaut because it's a re-telling of the Abbé Prévost story. Henze had grown up during the Third Reich when "modern" music and jazz were banned. Still only in his mid 20's, Henze used the story to explore what to him were still "new" forms. Henze's music is fairly accessible, so even conservative audfiences won't find Boulevard Solitude too difficult. The "fallen women" series travels to Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Southampton, Plymouth, Llandudno,  and Bristol.

Then WNO mounts a real challenge: Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, in Cardiff from 24th  May 2014, in Birmingham on 7 June and at the Royal Opera House, London, from 25th July. This will be the staging by Jossi Weiler and Sergio Morabito, first heard in Stuttgart ten years ago.  There's an audio recording of a later production. Moses und Aron is being paired with Verdi's Nabucco. The production was first seen in Stuttgart in January 2013, and ended its run last week. The director is Rudolf Frey. It's astute of WNO to pair the two operas because Nabucco is not, as some London critics think, a hymn to false gods and graven images but a statement of faith in an austere, enduring God. Follow this link to more information and production photos. There's a gaudy golden backcloth for those who need glitz. 

Also intriguing will be the Edgar Allan Poe double bill directed by David Pountney in 2014. Claude Debussy’s unfinished one-act opera The Fall of the House of Usher has been orchestrated by Robert Orledge, using additional material from sketches left by Debussy. It will be heard with Gordon Getty’s Usher House. Both will be presented in San Francisco in 2015. The picture right is Harry Clarke's illustration from an early French edition of Poe's poem. David Pountney directs.

Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek returns in the 2011 Music Theatre Wales production, which will also be heard in London.  In Summer 2013, before the full formal season, the WNO Youth Opera will be doing Britten's Paul Bunyan. This isn't touring for obvious reasons.

Mega Symphony of Human Dignity : Jurowski, LPO Beethoven Schoenberg Nono

Vladimir Jurowski's programme  at the Royal Festival Hall proved that intelligent musicality can reach people as well, if not better than, the celebrity gimmicks so popular these days. Jurowski simply stood in front of the audience, speaking in a quiet voice. "This programme is about the dignity of those oppressed and the triumph of the human spirit". (or words to that effect). The concert should be heard, he suggested, as a whole entity culminating in Beethoven's Fifth, rather than a series of disparate parts.

We all know Beethoven. This was a new challenge, to listen through colorations filtered through a new context, and to develop our own sensitivity to the issues involved. Conceptually, this was sophisticated. Conventional wisdom assumes that "ordinary" people are too stupid to respond to new ideas. Thus the obssession with celebrities, dumbing down and "explaining" things in over-simplistic terms.  It's counter-productive. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", goes the saying, for it inoculates people with prejudices. Instead, Jurowski treats audiences like sensible people who can listen for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

Thanks to the generosity of Deutsche Bank, who sponsor tickets for those who don't normally go to concerts, there were a lot of people in the audience for whom this was a new experience. Would they be scared off by Schoenberg? Fortunately they hadn't swallowed the myth that Schoenberg is too "difficult" though he's been dead 60 years.  Many of them responded to what Jurowski said, and listened with fresh ears, experiencing the "mega-symphony" as a response to universal human conditions. That, all said and done is what music is.  All the fuss made about clapping between movements, appropriate dress, youth participation etc is sideshow. Concerts are not about behaviour or social function, but about music, above and beyond all. Everything else falls into place as long as you listen.

This audience was most definitely listening, and emotionally engaged from the start. It wasn't relevant whether they knew Fidelio as opera or not. It was sufficient that they realized that Fidelio is about political prisoners. Listening to the drama in the music, they could use their own imaginations. The performance didn't matter so much as the way it stimulated the audience to think about human suffering. Most of us, thankfully won't have to live through that first hand. Ultimately that is the purpose of art: to make us more sensitive, and make us think of lives othetr than our own. 

Wisely, Jurowski chose three items in the English language for the core of the programme, so the audience could understand without filter.  Lord Byron's poem, on which Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon is based, uses florid, impenetrable text.  References like "Corinth's pedagogue" and "Thou, Timur, in his captive's cage" are closed to those without a classical education. But then dictatorships are opaque, so it's psychologically true. Schoenberg sets the text unadorned, recited in quasi Sprechstimme, in this version with string orchestra and pianist (Catherine Edwards). Robert Hayward conveyed meaning through the intensity of his gestures.

Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw is much more visceral because it's so direct. "I cannot remember everything....." intones the narrator. "But I have no recollection how/ I got underground/ to live/ in the sewers of Warsaw/ for so long a time". Jurowski moderates his natural tendency for lyricism with stark angular rhythms, intensifying the psychic dislocation of this extreme situation. Hayward is an opera singer but the art requires the intensity of an actor. He obviously knows German, but the shouts of the Nazi guards are better delivered with more bite. Jurowski gets the LPO to create savage staccato. temi almost spinning out of control as the guards march the men off to the gas chamber. You could analyse this music in terms of serial rows, but it works just as well to listen emotionally, hearing the repetitions as manic  obsessive. Structural form serves musical feeling. The Gentlemen of the London Philharmonic Choir had been seated behind the orchestra all evening. Now they rose and the chorus "Sh'ma Yisroel" exploded like a miracle, transcending the grimness that had gone before. This is the "grandiose moment when they all started to sing as if prearranged, the old prayer that they had neglected for so many years".

Luigi Nono's Julius Fučík was semi staged (Annabel Arden) which is valid, for it connects to Nono's opera L'Intolleranza. This simple staging referenced the photographs we've seen of the 1961 production.  Above the orchestra, a projection of a cloister which seems curiously serene given the subject. Fučík was a Communist, arrested and murdered by the Nazis. Scraps of writings he made in prison were collected after his death and published as Notes from the Gallows. Ironically, Fučík's oposition to one form of totalitarianism was co-opted by another. The book received saturation coverage in Communist circles. Yet the reason the book is so powerful is perhaps its message of hope.

An anonymous Voice (Malcolm Sinclair) dominates at first, the orchestra oppressively brooding. Surprisngly idiomatic playing from the LPO. I'd never thought of Jurowski as a Nono conductor, but he approaches this music with instinctive passion. Then, quietly, Omar Ebrahim as Fučík takes control. No matter how he was humiliated, Fučík was not destroyed. "Winter prepares man for its rigours as it does a tree". If a man loves life, he cannot be diminished even if he's beheaded. "Remember me, not with sorrow, but with precisely that joy with which I always lived".  Ebrahim barely has to raise his voice, so powerful is his characterization. Now the image of the cloister makes sense. Read more here about what I've written about Julius Fučík, including a baby picture)

From out of Nono's Julius Fučík the famous first bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony arise. The power of this symphony can be dimmed by over-familairity, but how it shone here in the context of Jurowski's programme! The driving tempi, the scurrying whips of string and brass, absolute confidence in certain triumph. The symphony can bear many different interpretations, but here Jurowski brought out its energy and vigour - the spirit of human dignity that triumphs over all odds.


photo credit Roman Gontcharov, IMG

Fučík Alex Ross : tonight at the South Bank

Tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a remarkable programme. (My review is HERE). It starts with the Overture to Beethoven's Fidelio. Then, Schoenberg Ode to Napoleon op 41 and A Survivor from Warsaw op 46 and Luigi Nono's Julius Fučík, which will segue straight into Beethoven's Symphony no 5 without a break. Beethoven 9 might be more obvious, but there are good reasons for this choice.

This should be an extremely stirring recital because all these pieces are intense - and political.  Composers write about human situations they care passionately about. Why shouldn't they write about human rights and the suppression thereof? Beethoven shows us  that there never was a time when music had to be soothingly retro. The Sarah Palin School of Music will have to wipe Beethoven off the map! Much respect due to Jurowski for programming this. It's an act of courage and principle.

The photo above shows Julius Fučík (1872-1916) uncle of Julius Fučík (1903-43) the composer who wrote spectacular military marches, including Entrance of the Gladiators, which is often heard at the start of circuses and sporting events. That's relevant because Fučík the younger sacrificed his life to oppose the Nazis.  Here he is a an infant dressed up in the sort of costume that went nicely with the pomp and circumstance that his uncle's music inhabited (though not only for belligerent reasons). He's inspired. He's even got a hat, like a miniature Napoleon. This little lad grew up to be Communist leader and was arrested by the Nazis. He was tried by by Judge Freisler who would  murder thousands of opponents to the regime, and hanged in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. In 1947, his widow gathered together his writings and messages from prison and published Notes From the Gallows. Further irony: the Communist Party used Fučík's words to legitimize their regime. Luigi Nono, also  a Communist, chose Fučík as a subject because he cared about what Fučík stood for.

Nono was also son-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg. It's important to remember Schoenberg, Nono and their peers especially now that the South Bank has finally launched its Alex Ross The Rest is Noise year. That's been so heavily promoted for so long that it's hard to believe it still hasn't started. The year will mean programming based around Ross's idea of what 20th century music should be, which is not the same thing as what 20th century music actually was. For a much more incisive approach,  read Paul Griffiths. There is no comparison. It's not the dumbing down that's a problem but the idea that  musical experience should be governed by commercial promotion of one source, not necessarily the best, and so heavily marketed that this one source obliterates all else.  Totalitarian revision of music history? The South Bank gets state funding, but it uses its status to serve commercial purposes? No-one will dare query the ethics because there's too much money at stake.  All the more reason we need programmes like the one Jurowski has planned for us tonight.

Arnold Schoenberg and the Swiss Guards

A flash of vivid colour - the Swiss Guards in their Renaissance costumes, guarding the Pope in the Vatican. They have to be bright, physically fit, Swiss and Catholic which limits them to a fairly small gene pool.  Because there's no open recruitment, they're ferociously clannish and loyal to each other and to the standards they believe in. How does Arnold Schoenberg fit in ? Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden sets a poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898), the Swiss poet and novelist.

"Und ein Reich will sich erbauen, das den Frieden sucht auf der Erde.......Und ein königlich Geschlecht wird erblühn mit starken Söhnen, dessen helle Tuben dröhnen: Friede, Friede, auf der Erde!" (and an empire will be built, that will bring peace on earth.....a kingly race will blossom with strong sons, whose shining trumpets call out : Peace, peace on Earth)

In this poem, Meyer wasn't writing about the Swiss Guards per se,  but he was fascinated by pageantry and especially by Rome. So it's interesting that when he did write about the Swiss Guards, in his poem Der Schweizer, he did so as satire. "Sie kommen mit dröhnenden Schritten entlang Den von Raffaels Fresken verherrlichten Gang, In der puffigen alten, historischen Tracht, Als riefe das Horn sie zur Murtener Schlacht: (They march in lordly formation, as if they were painted in a fresco by Raffael, in their antique garb, as if they were called to the battle of Morat, where they defeated Charles of Burgundy in 1467).

But the Pope is cutting back, skimping on coal and candles. How are the Swiss Knights to survive?

"Herr heiliger Vater, die Taler heraus, Sonst räumen wir Kisten und Kasten im Haus. Potz Donner und Hagel und höllischer Pfuhl, Wir versteigern dir den apostolischen Stuhl." (Lord, Holy Father, get out them Talers or we'll smash your walls and roofs. Thunder and lightning and hellish hailstorms. We'll sell off your apostolic Throne!)

So the Pope mumbles and ups their pay packet and the Lions become Lambs once more. The value of Industrial Action! 

Even deeper irony : the poem was set by Viktor Ullmann in 1942, when he was in Theresienstadt. Apart from Schoenberg and the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck, hardly anyone set Meyer's poetry, so Ullmann must have had his reasions. He would almost certainly have been familiar with Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden, as he knew Schoenberg and his circle. Ullmann plays up the sardonic tone, emphasizing the rebellious anarchy. The Swiss Guards are beautifully kitted out but treat them badly and they'll turn on their master, even if he is the Head of the Church. And the Pope gives in, meekly.

photo : Andreas Walker

Schoenberg's missing Mahler photo - latest

Three weeks ago, E Randol Schoenberg broke the news that Arnold Schoenberg's treasured photo of Mahler might have been located. It's not any old photo, but was signed and dedicated to Schoenberg personally, and for many years had pride of place in Schoenberg's study. Then it went missing The story is that one of Schoenberg's colleagues gave it to to the grandfather of the man who now claims to own it. Maybe true, maybe not, depending on proof. Read the latest development HERE.

Missing Mahler photo found !

From E Randol Schoenberg, the composer's grandson, comes exciting news! In 1907, Mahler gave Schoenberg a copy of his portrait, and added a personal dedication. Schoenberg treasured it .In this photo, taken in Schoenberg's studio, the Mahler photo is hanging below Schoenberg's painting of Mahler. At some point, the photo went missing. Suddenly, someone contacted the Schoenberg Centre in Vienna, saying a photo had been found "hidden in the back of a boiler room". Read the full story HERE.

Schoenberg Gurrelieder BBC Prom 41

Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder
is conceived as cosmic panorama. King Waldemar curses God and is himself cursed, doomed to ride the skies forever, inspiring awe and horror. This is an audacious work of theatre for orchestra and voices. No costumes needed, nor staging, though seeing it in a performance space as inherently dramatic as the Royal Albert Hall intensifies its impact. No live Gurrelieder will ever be dull.

Gurrelieder has featured in seven BBC Proms. Pierre Boulez conducted it in 1973, in an astounding performance that is still one of the best recordings available. Andrew Davis opened the 1994 Proms with a Gurrelieder where Hans Hotter gave an outstanding performance as speaker, so remarkable that it's lived in my memory ever since. Jukka-Pekka Saraste and his musicians have a lot to live up to, but their 2012 Proms Gurrelieder did not disappont. Every performance has its merits, and from each we learn.

Wagner's influence was so pervasive that Schoenberg, like Mahler and Hugo Wolf before him, needed to find forms other than opera through which to develop his musical persona.  Saraste emphasizes the "Wagnerisms" in Gurrelieder so forcefully that you keep hearing echoes from Tristan und Isolde in the interaction between Waldemar and Tove. here's even an echo of the Shepherd's  tune in the woodwind passages. King Waldemar's men sound like Gunther's Gibichungs, and the Waldtraube plays as pivotal a role as the Waldvogel. It's relevant that Simon O'Neill, who sang Waldemar, specializes in lower-range Wagnerian roles like Siegmund.  Angela Denoke was a reasonable Tove, and Katarina Karnéus sang a beautifully rounded Wood Dove.

Saraste's emphasis so dominates that the differences betwen Parts 1 and 3 in Gurrelieder are minimized, particularly as Part 1 was conducted more loosely than Part 3. It's a valid approach, and certainly makes the piece approachable. Yet it's not an interpretation that brings out the Schoenberg in Gurrelieder, which is far more original and challenging.

Between the time Schoenberg began Gurrelieder and the time he completed it, he went through trauma in his personal life. The picture above shows Schoenberg and his wife Mathilde Zemlinsky, with their two children. It's a summer afternoon, they're in the Austrian countryside. But the faces are pools of blood. Mathilde and the artist Richard Gerstl had an affair but when it ended, Gerstl killed himself. The following year, Schoenberg (himself a painter) wrote Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten and Ewartung (op 17, 1909). He was now able to resolve the impasse with Gurrelieder.

In Part 2 of Gurrelieder, Waldemar responds to the loss of Tove with "Herrgott, Herrgott, wiesst du was du tatest" . The notes that are later sung as "Herrgott" appear right at the beginning of the whole piece, but are now tranformed. Simon O'Neill doesn't have the most lyrically beautiful voice, but it's right for Waldemar, consumed as he is with cosmic rage. O'Neill uses the idiosyncrasies of his voice intelligently. This Waldemar is maddened by suffering and turns on God. "Lasst mich, Herr, die Kappe deines Hofnarr'n tragen!", he snaps. (Let me wear your jester's cap). As Klaus Narr tells us, Waldemar isn't a nice man, which is perhaps why he's so overwhelmed when Tove loves him. O'Neill seems to have understood the part in context of the whole work, rather than just singing his own part regardless as some of the smaller parts are often done. This I respect more than a "lovely" voice,  Roman Trekel had an even more metallic burr, but sang parts that worked for him. Philip Langridge  (a good Klaus Narr) had an even more awkward voice, but used it to create character better than most.
 
As the ghost of Waldemar rides through the skies, the terrified Peasant (Neal Davies) hides and puts his faith in formulaic prayers. So it's significant that Schoenberg makes so much of  Klaus Narr. He's a jester and plays the fool, but it's his job ito say things to kings (and Gods) that they don't want to hear. Like Waldemar and his hunters, the jester is dead, too, a haunted spirit forced to walk in endless circles, going nowhere. It's not a good thing and he knows it. His music is unsettling, as it should be, despite the mock bucolic text. The joke is on the jester, who must ride with his master in death. Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts sang correctly but could have expressed more savage irony. From this point, a change is coming, overturning the "Wagnerian" forces that prevailed before. In the orchestra, Saraste lets small instruments like piccolo and xylophone be heard over the big brass and overwhelming strings.

Superlative choruses sang the demonic huntsmen, extremely well-parted so their song moved with the wildness you'd expect from ghosts riding on the wind. As they fade into  "Versinkt! Versinkt", an eerie chill seems to sink in, even in the overheated Royal Albert Hall.
 
The "Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind" sweeps away all that's gone before. But Waldemar's curse is not resolved. Instead, Schoenberg uses his music and Sprechstimme to herald something completely new. Haunted as I am by Hans Hotter's Speaker I probably expect miracles. This is a part for baritones who retain their musical instincts even when their voices bloom no more, which adds to the meaning of this strange part. As dawn breaks, the ghosts fade, and nature, in its glory, awakes. Wolfgang Schöne still has a voice, and intones the tricky rhythms nicely. But we're definitely not in Wagner territory now. The Speaker addresses "Herr Gänsefuß, Frau Gänsekraut" (Lord Goosefoot, Lady Amaranth), a reference to the "Herrgott" heard earlier. It's also a reference to Waldemar and Tove and their status in the scheme of worldly things. But Goosefoot and Amaranth are tall weeds cut down by wind. This Wind blows the past away, to welcome new growth.

 "Seht die Sonne!" the chorus sang with tumultous vigor, the orchestra resurgent in glorious splendour. "Läßt von lichter Stirne fliegen Strahlenlockenpracht" (and from the sun's glowing brow flies "the spendour of his locks oif light" as the translation by Donna Hewitt puts that last, lovely and very Germanic noun).

Full review and cast list in Opera Today

Walter Braunfels Jeanne D'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna

Walter Braunfels's Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna is a much underestimated work. It's eclipsed by the fame of Die Vögel, but Jeanne d'Arc is a masterpiece. Braunfels fought at the front during the First World War. The trauma completely changed his perspectives. Die Vögel is is an early stage in Braunfel's's engagement with the issues of the 20th century. Jeanne d'Arc is in many ways its culmination, politically, spritually and musically.
 
Braunfels started writing Jeanne d'Arc in 1938. He'd been proscribed by the Nazis, and made an unemployable non-person whose music could not be performed in public. Hitler was threatening war, staved off by British appeasement. By the time Braunfels completed the opera in 1943, war had broken out all over again on an even wider scale than the war he'd known. This time his sons were at the front.. The madness was happening all over again."We are like castaways on a desert island, around which the hurricane continues to rage", he wrote.

Braunfels's choice of subject was deliberate. Joan of Arc rallied the French against English invaders. This time France was invaded by Germans. Joan was a powerless girl who stood up to overwhelming forces. Throughout Europe in the 1920's, 30's  and 40's, Joan was a symbol  explored in plays, movies, and music. Braunfels's most direct inspiration was Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, which he heard in Zurich in 1938. By connecting to medieval Christian Europe, Braunfels eschews both totalitarian anti-religion and the kind of nationalism that causes war.

Braunfels's libretto, which he wrote himself after reading about Joan's trial, places the context firmly in  a time of crisis. A chorus of villagers cry in panic, Hilfe, Hilfe! As Joan's father later says "An Himmel lohnt drer Brand von tausend Höfen". Johanna, however, is sitting by a tree from which a strange light is shining. Voices tell her that she has a mission. She';s so child-like that she sings a ditty, complete with tra la las. "Denn ein Kreiger, ein Kreiger, soll ich werden".

Braunfels's music is pointedly pure and simple. Single instrumental groups, often solo instruments, swathes of strings and winds suggest flowing movement not decoration for its own sake. Even in the scenes in the royal court, textures are clean, texts conversational. King and knights, portrayed as ordinary men. When Saint Michael appears, he's almost one of their own. For the faithful like Johanna, (and Braunfels), saints are as natural as normal people.

Braunfels uses a formal structure to frame the narrative, like a  medieval painting. Three main sections, Der Berufung (the summons) Der Triumph and Das Leiden, (Sufferings) unfold. Der Triumph, of course, lasts but a few minutes. It's preceded by a bizarre interlude, after the first Act. The Herzog de la Trémouille steps in front of the theatre curtain and sings a monologue. "When God created the Fool, he, the wisest of all, could be sure that scum (Abschaum) would arise from it". The Duke thinks Johanna is scum, for she leads "Die dumpfe Masse" (stupid masses) "From every hole there now crawls all who were poor, and who, deeply humiliated, long for a 1000 year Reich - troopers, roughnecks, greedy wastrels!". (Landsknechte, Raufbolde, geldsücht'ge Habenichste). Ferocious dark chords, skeletal discords, smoky woodwinds. The vocal part is set with angular extremes. "And I alone" sings the bass, "should be wrong because I don't follow deception and don't give in to urges". Perhaps Braunfels is referring to non-believers who distrust faith and miracles. But the references to the rise of the Brownshirts are so obvious that they can't be ignored.  Anyone who thinks Braunfels was a mindless, dreamy Romantic needs to hear this, and wonder what its upside down morality might mean.

The moment of Johanna's triumph at Rheims with fanfares. At last the music soars as one would expect, but this is no cinematic glory. Braunfels keeps his colours clear, the text simple. "Johanna ! Johanna!" the townsfolk cry, but there's a chill, which prepares us for the nest scene, where at dawn, Johanna is communing alone with her voices. This minor-key stillness seems the true heart of Braunfels's meditation,   We're spared the deatils of Johanna's first imprisonment. Each scene is preceded by a Vorpeil that creates mood, but the one that begins the third act expresses the passage of time. Johanna has been confessed and recanted, yet she's still in prison. Dark rhythms, blasting timpani, trumpets blasting, Johanna's voice ascending shooting up the scale, all sudden, tense moments cut off in their prime.  Distant kin of the jerky bird rhythms of Die Vögel and Die Verkündigung. The Vicar Inquisitor condemns Johanna in a mix of speech and stylized chant. The king and nobles call Johanna  a fraud : their music vaguely like medieval march. Then St Michael appears, a Lohengrin whom no-one can see.

Long, keening lines in the orchestra. We're now at the stake in the marketplace at Rouen. Joan is calm for Saint Michael has told her why she must die. Significantly, now, Braunfels gives Gilles des Rais (Bluebeard) an interesting aria. "Nien, niemals, nein, niemals, so endet das nicht"  He can't believe that the real miracle is Johanna's death, not her escape. Braunfels shows des Rais as sensitive, confused and desperate for certainty, "Gewissheit! Gewissheit! Gewissheit!". Perhaps it was that crisis of faith that drove the historic des Rais into madness and turned him into a mass murderer of innocent children? This is an aspect of the story few explore, but Braunfels does it by implication,  and shows it as.a very 20th century anguish.

The Bishop of Beauvais insists "Mein System war der richtiges!", but the part is written to show the strain on the tenor's voice. Yet again, we hear the bird rhythms of  Die Vögel , and how they function as exclamation points breaking up the vocal line. Not comfortable, soothing or Romantic at all.  In contrast, the deeper, more lugubrious timbre of the Vicar Inquisitor, who shows more sympathy with Johanna. The chorus howls like a mob and in a sudden crescendo, we can hear the flames ignite. Screams and  eerie"smoke" like cadences from the orchestra. Gilles des Rais appears again, his last aria tinged with extreme grief. He sees Johanna as Christ-like, but still can't understand what her death means "Satan, du hast geseigt". Only when the mob discovers that Johanna's heart did not burn do they realize a miracle has taken place. "Wir haben eine Heilige gebrannt" cries the Vicar Inquisitor. By then, though, it's too late.

Braunfels's Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna is mock medieval, but like Hiundemith's Mathis der Maler, Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimuss, (more HERE) Orff's Carmina Burana and indeed Braunfel's  Die Verkündigung. (more HERE) the medievalism is but a disguise for utterly modern preoccupations.  There's nothing retro or escapist in these pieces. Far too much is made of the fact that fashion changed after the war, and this music didn't get performed.  After the trauma of the Second World War, people were hardly in the mood to deal with reminders of the period, especially when, up to 1989, much of central and eastern Europe was still controlled by the Soviet Union, in direct consequence of the war. Similarly, the "jazz age" and modernity of the 1920;s was a reaction against the trauma of the First World War and the forces that shaped it. As Braunfels would certainly have understood, cultures need periodic renewal..

It's nonsense to blame Schoenberg or modern music for the eclipse of composers like Braunfels. Fashions in music change all the time. No-one forced anyone to write 12 tone, it just opened up new ideas. Berg and Webern wrote in very different styles to Schoenberg.  Composers often seem to disappear after they die for no apparent reason. Schubert, for example, was obscure long after his death, revived sporadically, and the D numbers organized for the 1928 centenary. Even Bach fell out of fashion until Mendelssohn performed him and made sure he was published.

The notion that Braunfels and others were "suppressed" by modern music is as crazy as thinking you can be President if you can see Russia from your backyard. Braunfels and his peers were modern.  There are many kinds of modernity, and hearing them in the context of art, literature and the culture of their time, shows how they fit into place. So why the need to hear them as "suppressed" by modernity?
 
I don't know why only a few minutes of Braunfel's Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (read more HERE) was heard at the Proms. It was as if the composer had been posthumously castrated.  Surely those who love his work should be proud of what he achieved? But until we learn to listen to Braunfels and the composers of his time for what they really wrote, they won't get the genuine respect they deserve.

There's a very good recording of Braunfels Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna released late last year on Decca. Juliane Banse sings Johanna (she also sang the lead in Die Verkündigung), Terje Stensvold sings Gilles des Rais, Günter Missenhardt the Herzog de la Trémouille. Manfred Honeck, who specializes in Braunfels, conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Get it. Extremely good performances, and conducting. Just as it's a good idea to avoid the sloppy molasses LA Die Vögel (Conlon) in favour of the vastly more intelligent, idiomatic 1997 Decca Die Vögel (Zagrosek and a cast who really can sing those high notes) best stick to Honeck with European orchestras.
Please also see the other things I've writte about Joan of Arc in music, film and art, and lots more on Braunfels  

Knussen Myaskovsky Goehr Barbican

Big publicity for the Prokofiev - man of the people? concert at the South Bank, but the smart money was at the Barbican to hear Prokofiev's contemporary, the rarely heard Nikolay Myaskovsky. Ten years older than Prokofiev, Myaskovsky (1881-1950)  knew the brief period when the Soviet Union represented the futurist modernity. A sensitive aesthete with an upper class background, he cloaked himself in inscrutable reticence, which helped him survive the excesses of Stalinism. Oliver Knussen's striking performance of Myaskovsky's 10th Symphony with the BBC Symphony Orchestra showed how much more there is to Myaskovsky than his relative obscurity might suggest.

Myaskovsky's inspiration was Pushkin's story of the Bronze Horseman, where a man, whose lover has died in a terrible flood, rages against fate. The huge bronze statue of Peter the Great comes off its plinth and hunts the man down.  Even in Pushkin's time, that could be read as a protest against unfair authority. In 1927, as Stalin was consolidating power, it was shockingly brave of Myaskovsky to choose such a subject.

Furthermore, Oliver Knussen's striking performance brought out the modernist elements in the score much more sharply than Evgeny Svetlanov did in the only readily available recording. One of Knussen's specialities is Futurist music. He underlines the contrast between the "little man" and his beloved, represented by solo violin (Andrew Haveron) and the overwhelming forces against them. Indeed, Myaskovsky was particularly moved by Alexander Benois's illustrations of the story (see above) so Knussen's dynamics carry weight. Rolling waves of brass and timpani vividly evoke the waves of the flood, engulfing the strings, Stark alarums, trumpets screaming anguish. Savage discords that thwack down all opposition. Nothing romantic or populist about this music. Maybe Prokofiev needs to be heard in context with Myaskovsky.

It's Alexander Goehr's 80th birthday this year, honoured by a special BBC commission, When Adam Fell. Numerous composers in the audience, as Goehr is an important figurehead. It's nicely orchestrated. Goehr himself connects it to one of his best known works, The Deluge, using texts by Sergei Eisenstein, evolving like collage in film. Another Prokofiev connection! Knussen, that master of erudite programming must have chuckled. When Adam Fell is lighter and more scintillating, all bright, sparkling sounds, percussion reduced to two desks of marimba and bell-like effects. References, too, to Bach's chorale Durch Adam's Fall ist alles verderbt. (photo Elan Tal)

Goehr studied with Hanns Eisler in East Berlin, who had worked with Schoenberg, as did Goehr's father Walter. Again, Knussen's programming genius came up with Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony no 1, which like Goehr's new work eschews percussion.  Full circle, a subtle tribute. Not the usual version this time, but the revison for large orchestra created in 1935 which fleshes out the same basic structure with extra voices. The BBCSO trumpets and horns had a great time, vivacious! One of the joys of the original is its audacious compression, which gets lost with larger forces, but Knussen made it lively and cheerful. Several big names in the audience drifted off after the Goehr piece, but Goehr himself stayed on to listen. Afterwards, his face was lit up with happiness. A good man!

For concision and clarity, though, Niccolò Castiglioni usually surpasses anyone else. Knussen adores him, partly because they have a similar irreverent sense of humour. Castiglioni's music is the perfect antidote to those who think classical music is ponderous and dull, but it isn't performed as often as it should be because it's technically demanding. In another flash of wit, Knussen chose Castiglioni's 1963 Concerto for Orchestra. Again, no timpani. Just as Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie used a small orchestra in big music, Castiglioni uses a  big orchestra for music of aphoristic compression. Most of Castiglioni's music is written for soloists or small ensemble, but Concerto is unusual in that it's written for vast forces.  Just as Goehr's When Adam Fell quotes from his earlier work The Deluge, Castiglioni's Concerto quotes the first bars of his most famous work Tropi. "Full of light and fantasy and crazy gestures", says Knussen "in an accelerator tunnel ...little fragments which start to multiply". Quick flurries of high pitched sounds, interspersed with silences that Knussen carefully beats out with his baton, so you "hear" the pulse of the work continuing uninterrupted.  A very long chord, wavering brass lines, single note interjections from the clarinet, then the whole ensemble storms forward, trumpets blasting like the horn of a train speeding out of control. Silences again, tiny flurries, more clean brass chords, repeated as echoes, and sudden stop. "You know what I'm going to say" said Knussen grinning, because he often reprises works he really loves. Lots more on Castiglioni and Knussen on this site like THIS 
LISTEN TO THIS CONCERT on BBC Radio 3 til Friday

Lonesome Schoenberg's New World

"How Schoenberg became Lonely" by the biographer of his American years, Sabine Feisst. "Far from being isolated or alone, he in fact never failed to attract supporters in Europe and America, and scored substantial successes on both continents. Schoenberg’s penchant for the rhetoric of loneliness expressed something deeper than pessimism; it worked along with his unfailing ethical idealism to fuel his fighting spirit, which was the engine of his productivity, creativity, and teaching activities in both Europe and America".

Feisst's book, Schoenberg's New World (OUP, 2011) is an antidote to the demonization of Schoenberg currently fashionable in some circles, as if  "disappearing"  Schoenberg might somehow magic music back into the 19th century. Rumours are that some want him banned in LA of all places. Feisst demonstrates how integral Schoenberg was to the development of American music as well as European. Myths are made when people rehash the same old stories. A historian's job is to analyse how things come to be known. Please also see this clip of Schoenberg conducting Mahler in LA as early as 1934.

Schoenberg conducts Mahler - rarity

This popped up in my youtube subscriptions last week but I've been much too busy, so AT LAST! Schoenberg conducts Mahler 2/2 with the Cadillac Symphony in Los Angeles in 1934. The occasion isn't mentioned in Stuckenschmidt's extensive biography though there's a brief mention of Schoenberg doing a number of one-off radio broadcasts at the time. Whether he did the full symphony or just one movement (not unknown practice then) I don't know, but fortunately this fragment was recorded.
Please also see the many other composer conducting composer clips I have on this site - Mahler playing Mahler on piano rolls, for example, Grieg playing Grieg, Debussy playing Debussy, even Webern conducts Schubert. (use search box at right)

Sholto Kynoch : Messiaen Fantaisie

Please see this review by Fiona Maddocks of the new CD Fantasy. It "stands out for high-quality playing but also for the inclusion of three fascinating early works by Messiaen".

Combined on this disc are Schubert's Fantasie D 934 (op 159), Schoenberg's Phantasy op 47 and Messiaen's Fantaisie. This latter was only published in 2007, after it was found among Messiaen's papers. It's an important piece because it shares many ideas with Messiaen's L'Ascension, his creative breakthrough. This is the chamber version, connected to the more elaborate works for full orchestra and organ.

This is a very vivacious performance. Sholto Kynoch's playing is lively. He recognizes how the bold, emphatic chords frame the piece. and will become Messiaen trademarks. Yet he also recognizes Messiaen's fundamental clarity and warmth. It opens. as Kynoch states, " with a dramatic piano solo in quadruple octaves.....clearly demonstrating Messiaen's use of "additive rhythms whereby he slightly extends certain notes giving a unique dance feel and rhythmic drive".

Adamant as these rhythms may be, they're played with a bright, lightness of touch, so the violin part shines, too. Again, this is insight, for Fantaisie was a very personal piece. Messiaen wrote it as something he could play with his first wife, the violinst Claire Delbos. She was an established player in her own right, so this version is very much a partnership of two equals, much more so than the larger extended versions. Kynoch and Kaoru Yamada, the violinist, truly catch the affectionate, intimate spirit of the piece.

There are two other early pieces with a Messaien-Delbos connection, Thème and Variations and La Mort du Nombre. The first is interesting because it shows characteristics of the composer's later style. The second blends piano and violin with tenor and soprano, (Nicky Spence and Rhona McKail)

I've listened to Sholto Kynoch and Kaoru Yamada for many years, hearing them develop. Kynoch is an exceptionally good partner, possibly the best in his generation. It's a very rare skill, because it requires intuitive feel for text and the way it's expressed by voice as well as by piano. There are lots of good pianists, but very few with the ability to work with singers and bring out the best in partnership. For a debut recording, this is very good indeed, and a must for anyone interested in Messiaen and his music.

The disc comes from the small but enterprising independent Stone Records, and was recorded in the beautiful acoustic of the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford in December 2009 .

Gurrelieder Salonen London Part 2

When Schoenberg returns to Gurrelieder in 1910, he has new energy and purpose. What a transformation! Of course the Wagner elements are still there, like the rhythms straight out of Der fliegende Hollander, lurching upwards and down like waves. Because King Waldemar cursed God, he and his men are cursed in return, forced to ride the clouds each night. But this is also the surreal, mad world of Ewartung. Anti-atonalists don't understand that atonality isn't anti-music but a way of extending the possibilities of music. Schoenberg and his contemporaries were responding to new frontiers opened by Freud and others. Ideas could no longer be contained in cosy boxes of certainty. How could music remain unchanged ?

What Schoenberg did was more than invent the 12 tone system. So what if composers don't write in serial rows or whatever any more? The real revolution Schoenberg rode the crest of was the idea that there are more possibilities to music than we realize.

So in Part 3 of Gurrelieder, there's a wildness breaking through that will one day find expression in many different ways. How Schoenberg must have smiled when he set the Bauer's terrified words. No more hiding under blankets, no more formula prayers.

Klaus-Narr isn't talking nonsense. He isn't a sophisticated person but he's talking about complex things, so he uses odd images. When Waldemar cursed God, he shouted, "Lasst mich, Herr, die Kappe deines Hofnarr'n tragen!". "Let me wear your jester's cap", all you stand for is a joke. Klaus Narr is the jester, whose job it is to say things to kings they don't want to hear, cloaking them as jest. Like Waldemar and his hunters, the jester is dead, too, a haunted spirit forced to walk in endless circles, going nowhere. It's not a good thing and he knows it. His music is unsettling, as it should be, leading into the demonic haunted chorus that fades Versinkt! Versinkt! before the truly amazing Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind. This is remarkable music : perhaps someone should analyze technically how it works. It sweeps away all that's gone before. Waldemar's curse is not resolved. Instead, this music and the Sprecher herald something completely beyond the level of straightforward story.

For many years I couldn't understand why the Sprecher is absolutely, pivotally important. Then I heard Hans Hotter. It was 1994, he was 85 years old, but so powerful that he transformed the entire performance. Hotter looked frail but he had such presence and authority that at last I realized what the Sprecher means. Gurrelieder is much more than narrative, it is more than a dramatic story. The Sprecher represents something so bizarre that even now it's hard to understand.

He's an elemental force, the very spirit of life, which overcomes death and darkness. Like Kluas-Narr he seems t0o speak in riddles, but the real "fools" are those who think the riddles are a joke. Are the gnats the knights, is Waldemar "Sankt Johanisswurm" ? What is real, what's illusion ? The words are simple but the portents far more profound. The whole locus of parts 1 and 2 are overturned, we are in an altogether more bizarre realm where nothing is what it seems. The Sprecher is the Waldtaube revisited, on an altogether more complex plane. Expressionism expresses things straight narrative can't hope to reach.

Hence the way the part is written, not song, not speech. It doesn't strain the voice, so it's usually taken by retired singers, even actors. But even if it's not physically a strain it requires exceptional musical sensibility to get those wavering pitches right and establish the significance of the part. In capsule, the Sprecher is atonality, modernism, a whole new way of approaching musical expression. No one uses Sprechstimme as such anymore, but its spirit lives on in, in different forms.

And to make the new beginnings clear, Schoenberg writes the magnificent coda at the end. Chorus and orchestra explode. "Seht die Sonne!" Behold the sun ! The night is driven away and the new dawn glows in a blaze of light. Fantastic playing from the orchestra here : Salonen doesn't lose sight of the purpose behind the enthralling glory.

Gurrelieder is dramatic, but staging would trivialize its whole meaning. It's distinctly not an opera, Wagnerisms notwithstanding. In this performance, light effects were skilfully used to intensify the mood. This isn't a new idea, as the music cries out contrasts of light and dark and shades between. Whoever did the lighting here was an artist, so sensitively was the music enhanced.

As Schoenberg himself said, Gurrelieder is a cantata, even if ends in a completely bizarre new way. The cantata form goes back at least to Bach. Mendelssohn and Schumann showed how it could serve secular drama. It's not a good idea to connect Gurrelieder to Mahler's Das klagende Lied. Mahler decisively and unequivocally turned away from cantata and from writing opera at a very early stage in his career. Instead, he went on to create something very different indeed. Often, people think Mahler is an opera man at heart. That's nonsense, and shows no understanding whatsoever of Mahler, demeaning what he really achieved. Similarly, Gurrelieder needs to be appreciated for what it is, cantata with a wonderful twist.

So much money has gone into this project, Vienna, City of Dreams, that it's a shame it's let down by the programme notes. Obviously, there are advantages to describing things in terms of Mahler, particularly with his anniversary year coming up and the lucrative marketing boom that will create. But oversimplification can become misleading and inaccurate. The world of Des Knaben Wunderhorn long predated Mahler. The Gothic in central European culture goes back a long way, and was a major impetus behind the whole Romantic movement. Indeed, the Romantic fascination with folk tale and horror created the whole mindset that enabled Freud and Jung to find terminology to describe. The Romantic interest in the individual also led to changes in politics, society, and aesthetics. Vienna 1900-35 wouldn't have happened at all if it hadn't been for the early 19th century Romantics.

Gurrelieder Salonen Philharmonia London 1

Gurrelieder was written in two stages, over 11 years. In the intervening years Schoenberg had developed so much that its successful premiere left him feeling almost angry. Couldn’t the audience hear where he was heading? Nearly a hundred years have passed since that first performance, so we’re in a better position to understand Gurrelieder’s place in the repertoire. On Saturday 28/2/09, Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philharmonia in a superb performance that made it clear why Schoenberg was to have such an influence on modern music.

Wagner’s impact on music was so revolutionary that even in 1900, a young man like Schoenberg had to engage with it before he could find himself. Hitherto Schoenberg had only written Lieder and chamber music. Suddenly, Gurrelieder bursts into his imagination, epic in scope and realization. Wagner’s influence is unmistakable. Yet Schoenberg is doing something quite distinctively his own.

The music in the first part is like Verklärte Nacht writ infinitely larger. How delicately the strings, harps and horns introduce the dream-like mood, and how the textures gradually build up in sweeping arcs. Salonen listens past the Wagnerian wrappings and hears Schoenberg, already distinctive and original. The orchestra may be huge, but he doesn’t let sheer volume overwhelm the innate refinement in the music, even in the explosive climaxes. It’s an interesting approach, cognizant of Schoenberg’s other music, rarely overburdened by excess. Salonen knows what he’s doing, and doesn’t mistake the riches in Gurrelieder as sub-Wagnerian, despite the obvious connection.

Indeed, like my friend Mark Berry writes in his blog boulezian, (link at right), it would be fascinating to hear Salonen conduct Wagner. Last year I heard Salonen conduct Sibelius at the Barbican. That was a shock as many are used to Sibelius being conducted like Tchaikovsky manqué, romantic and dreamy, which Sibelius himself couldn’t stand. Salonen came to Sibelius late, so he wasn’t constrained by preconceived tradition. He’ll be coming to Wagner late, too, perhaps with the same fresh approach.

Soile Isokoski sang Tove, with the assurance of experience. This is a role she’s made her own, developing it beyond the merely decorative. “Wunderliche Tove” is as gentle as a dove, but like doves, she’s strong. Her attraction to Waldemar is that she makes his mind “so klar, ein wacher Frieden über meine Seele”. They sing of death, but don’t get off on it. In any case, Tove thinks it’s only an interlude “wie ruhiger Schlummer” before awakening once more to life. So, no screaming histrionics need.

The Waldtaube‘s music is Erda-like, for she sees all, and represents a kind of earth conscience. Schoenberg clothes the part with music that evokes the Waldtaube’s panoramic vision : she sees the monk tolling the Angelus, we heard the orchestra solemnly creating it in sound. Monica Groop’s voice has mellowed nicely as she’s matured. Stig Andersen has sung a lot of Wagner, and it shows in the way he shapes the mighty “Herrgott, weisst du” sequence.

This is just part one, so please see part two HERE In many ways this is the more important part because it's where Schoenberg breaks new ground artistically : Magnificent music whoich proves that new and atonal can be passionately moving. The CD ius now out : The original programme notres underplayed Part 2 soit maybe useful to read about part 2 here if you get the CD,

Vienna as myth "City of Dreams"

"Vienna, City of Dreams, 1900-1935" is a series of concerts, exhibitions and other tie-ins running in 18 different European cities this spring and summer. It will be a huge commercial success because it builds upon the popular image of Vienna already ingrained into our minds.

Not for nothing the series gives great prominence to illustrations by Gustav Klimt. Klimt pervades commercial culture. We've all got the posters, postcards, CD covers, t-shirts, fridge magnets. So the series has inbuilt, instant "branding". You can't knock Klimt anymore than you dare knock motherhood or apple pie.

But therein lies the contradiction. Klimt's art may be glamorous, glossy and impressive but it reflects only one aspect of what was really going on in Vienna at this time. ' Read the link below, where Waldemar Januszczak describes him as "a pygmy seen through a microsope".

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4025174.ece

The concerts focus on well-known standards like Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg and Zemlinsky. That's no disadvantage as this is good music and it needs to be heard. The Philharmonia are an excellent orchestra, who deliver. Esa-Pekka Salonen is much underrated. His Sibelius series last year was brilliant, shattering the cosy sub-Tchaikovsky image many still have of the composer. So it is no defect at all if the series ignores composers like Krenek, Eisler and Schreker. It's a good thing if it brings good music, and good music needs to heard.

Basically, this is Second Viennese School, without using the term because it would scare the crowds away. In the last ten years, coinciding with the rise of internet message boards and similar founts of infinite wisdom, it's become fashionable to blame all modern music on Schoenberg and dodecaphony. Anti-atonality fanatics can't get their heads round the fact that Schoenberg adored Brahms and that there have been lots of different types of modern music. One of the best things in the programme book that comes with the series, is that it states that such ideas "belong to a cartoon account of music history".

It was good then that Julian Johnson, the series organizer, gave a talk before the Gurrelieder concert which emphasized the affinity the work has to Wagner. While most people who know Wagner can make the Gurrelieder connection, there are many more who don't, so this was a perfectly valid way of legitimizing Schoenberg by placing him in context. But there aren't many composers who weren't influenced by Wagner and the love/death obsession that runs throughout 19th century thought. And Wagner was a revolutionary. The talk hardly touched on the second part of Gurrelieder, or the new ground Schoenberg was breaking. It might have been an opportunity to explain these new aspects, but caution seems to have won out. The booklet refers to the "regret" some have that Schoenberg didn't continue to write in a late Romantic style, and that others dismiss it as "romantic excess". But artists can't help doing what they do. They are driven to create and can't choose, as such. And one of the finest recordings is by Boulez. In any case, people who have shelled out huge money to hear Gurrelieder are probably open to learning more about it.

It's a Faustian pact. Getting mass audiences may mean pandering to populist anti-modernism, but that in itself amounts to an attempt to refute nearly everything the period stood for. Of course people looked back on the past, but the reason the period is so fascinating was because there was so much happening that was new and innovative. The series bases its spiel on parallel developments in literature, psychology, politics etc. Playing down the modernity in the music contradicts the whole basic premise. Vienna 1900-1935 was a hotbed of intellectual change. That's why it is important : it was the birth of so much that is "modern".

It's Faustian, too, balancing how much information to give. The booklet is lavishly produced, full of one-line quotes. Especially impressive are Edward Timms's diagrams of the circles connecting people. These diagrams are justly famous because the influences are elaborate. But there's no context. How many people reading this know, or care, about the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Social Party? Or many of the people named therein ? If they did, they'd know Timms's books on Vienna anyway. The diagrams are there to add an illusion of authority and gravitas.

This imbalance of specialist knowledge and generalist simplification is worrying because a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. There are things in the booklet which over-simplify to the point of being misleading. But that's no big deal given that anyone can find out more if they want to. But the question is, will they ?

We live in an age where there's so much information around that it's easy to mistake quantity for quality. We have the illusion of knowledge, but not the intellectual depth to process it. Of course the series will inspire many to listen and think further, but there is also many who won't. It's not the series's fault that our culture values appearances rather than content. So the Klimt connection is apt. Looking at Klimt makes us think we know more than we actually do about secessionist Vienna and what followed. But it's shiny wrapping paper, point of sale attraction. There is absolutely nothing wrong about being commercial per se because it "spreads the word". What matters is the substance of what is being sold. Certainly in terms of music this series delivers but I'm less convinced by the packaging. Unfortunately, the medium is often the message, so it does matter how the subject is represented.

Modernity is the Elephant In The Room. It may not be easy to sell, but it needs to be acknowledged because that's what Vienna 1900-35 was about.