Thomas Dausgaard Proms : Nørgård Wagner Strauss Mozart Mahler

Per Nørgård

Proms 50 and 51 with Thomas Dausgaard conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The first presented Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with Mahler Symphony no 5, a programme with no discernible musical logic, produced efficiently but without much committment.  It was interesting to hear the basset clarinet in the Mozart, played by Annelien Van Wauwe, once you got used to the lower, more austere timbre, but why not pair it with something that complemented it better ? If you're going to make a statement, do it properly. But I guess Dausgaard has do do what BBC Proms management wants, and this year, music is the least of their priorities.

Dausgaard's second Prom was far more rewarding,  revealing signs of a genuine musical mind behind the programme, pairing Wagner (Parsifal Prelude to Act One), Richard Strauss (Vier letzte Lieder) and Per Nørgård's Symphony no 3.  Although Nørgård is one of the most important modern Danish composers, and one of Dausgaard's specialities, his idiom is idiosyncratic and may perhaps seem to be beyond the kind of audience the BBC seems hell bent on placating, at the expense of developing musical awareness.  All the more reason to let a conductor who knows what he's doing present a programe that helps even those new to new music to appreciate what Nørgård might be about.

Parsifal meant so much to Wagner that he created a Festival around it.  Far more than just another drama, it deals with metaphysical concepts, expressed through highly sophisticated  music.   Thus the value of listening to it as a "pure" orchestral creation. Dausgaard shaped it so it evolved gradually,  refined textures leading into the famous brass fanfares (which incidentally seem to pop up in Mahler's First) and flowing back.  Mysterious yet also clean confident clarity.  Of course Nørgård isn't copying Wagner, but you might intuit where he's heading.  The connection to Richard Strauss is not "the great war", this year's tick box obsession with the Proms team.  The Vier letzte Lieder were Strauss's last works : the culmination of a lifetime's experience both musical and personal.  Like Parsifal, the Vier letzte Lieder deal with abstract ideas with a spiritual, but not specific dimension.  Thus the attention paid to orchestral textures and subtle transitions, and almost mystical atmosphere. Dausgaard let the final notes dissipate, evaporating into silence.  Whether Strauss is contemplating death or an unknown future, the music does not end with the last sounds.  Generally, I like Malin Byström but on this occadsion her vibrato was a bit lush, not to a fault, but not as attuned to what was happening in the orchestra.

Per Nørgård's Symphony no 3 (1972-75) is abstract "pure" sound based on a technique described as "infinity series" creating movement through shifting chromatic and diatonic scales, weaving intricate patterns, evolving and ever-changing. Like water, it flows and adapts to different situations.  Although Nørgård is unique, his concepts aren't all that far from other composers. Think Debussy La Mer, or Boulez Dérives I and II growing and morphing like an organic life form or Gerard Grisey and the "spectralists" finding infinite colour in micro tonality, and of course Hans Abrahamsen of whom I've written a lot on this site.  Dausgaard shapes Nørgård’s long shimmering planes of sound so they seem to unfurl and rotate. The strings elide, solo violin giving direction. Brasses add forward thrust, while delicate sounds create a sense of tintinnabulation: sounds blending into the inaudible.  In the second movement, the Allegretto, new patterns emerge ; sharper, more fragmented sounds, the London Voices and the National Youth Chamber Choir singing syllables which eventually stretch into near-melody. Sometimes the fragments come like a sudden shock then blend into chorale. Yet this is also "beautiful" music in the sense that the colours and textures generate something in the listener's imagination, even on a subliminal level.  Complex music doesn't have to be "difficult".  Dausgaard shows how it can be presented in proper musical context.