Metzmacher Elbphilharmonie K A Hartmann Shostakovich

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

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

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

Gerhild Romberger photo Rosa Frank, Vienna Philharmonic

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Knussen Aldeburgh - Carter, Webern - and Mendelssohn ?

Mendelssohn Symphony No 1, with Elliott Carter's Instances for chamber orchestra (2012), written shortly before his death aged 103. Trust Oliver Knussen to come up with a programme that blends Mendelssohn, Dallapiccola, Carter, Webern and Ligeti, conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Maltings, Snape, Aldeburgh, part of this year's Aldeburgh Music Festival. Knussen's programmes are intriguing, always planned with musical nous and intelligence.

At first, I was shocked. Mendelssohn played with exuberance that veered close to wildness? Definitely not the kind of over-processed, over-manicured performance that puts too many  people off Mendelssohn. Instead Knussen made us think of Mendelssohn as audacious and free-spirited. Our perceptions are shaped by received wisdom, tainted by Wagnerian prejudice asnd boring, safe performasnce practice. Knussen might shock, but boring he never is.

Mendelssohn and Elliott Carter have a lot more in common than one might expect. Geniality and good humoured wit, for example, and an appreciation for stylish bon mot. Carter's Instances for chamber orchestra is an eight-minute piece for a medium-sized orchestra. In the first six minutes "a seemingly random sequence of sonorities and figures are are playfully flung at the listener", to quote Bayan Northcott, who writes serious programme notes, the kind that deserve to be quoted and remembered, infinitely more rewarding than the superficial pap that programme notes have beome (other than at Aldeburgh),  ".... culminating in a surging tutti, suddenly broken off. At this point a slower chorale-like texture previously adumbrated by  the brass, is taken up mainly by the strings in a more sustained and touchingly valedictory coda".  Then a deliberate pause, and a two minute "second movement" asserts itself, reiterating the ideas in the first movement with joyous, epigramatic concision.  As so often with Carter's later work, the piece seems intimate, as if the players were conversing, delighting in exchange.

Hearing Anton Webern's Symphony Op 21 (1928) after Elliott Carter made me realize how much Carter and Webern have in common, too. Two distinct movements within ten minutes, and an orchestra pared down to basics. The first movement "Ruhig, schreitend" employs an "Exposition comprising an intricate double canon, But the lines are so fragmented and criss-crossed " that they seem processional.  The double canon repeats  "but with the note values so altered, and the dynamics intensified, it sounds quite different", adds Northcott. The second movement "Variationen" develops the theme yet again, in even more distilled purity, ending elusively, as if the symphony, such as it is, will play out in the imagination.

A listener request, phoned in by another composer! Knussen has a thing for repeating shorter works in a concert. This time, he repeated the second movement of Webern's Symphony, so we could further savour its elusive, tantalizing promise.

Ligeti's Melodien for orchestra (1971) concluded the programme. Spastic pizzicato suggesting kinetic, oddly organic flickerings, glimpses of half-hidden images barely grasped in the undergrowth.  Carter, Webern and Ligeti forming a trinity  in which the idea of a symphony take new fiorm.  Earlier in the programme, Knussen followed Mendelssohn  with Luigi Dallapiccola's An Mathilde, a cantata based on three Heine poems, Den Strauss, den mir Mathilde band,  Gedächtnisfeier, and An die Engel. The soloist was Katrien Baerts. An interesting piece, which should be heard more, but this concert favoured the orchestra rather than voice and orchestra.

Tonight, Klangforum Wien presents two equally fascinating concerts under Ilan Volkov, the late night concert featuring Tristan Murail's Winter Fragments (2000) and Gérard Grisey's Vortex Temporum I, II and iii (1994-6) Alas, I can't be there but you can read about the pieces HERE and HERE. Klangforum Wien is one of the finest new music ensembles of its kind, so I hope the concert is recorded.

Anton Webern conducts Schubert

Special treat! Anton Webern conducts the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra in 1932 in his 1924 transcription of Schubert's German Dances.There are quite a few of Webern's arrangements of Schubert, and quite a few recordings, too, but this is Webern himself.