Szymanowski Third Bartók Eötvös Barbican

Karol Szymanowski's magnificent Song of the Night (Symphony no 3) received a splendid performance at the Barbican Hall, London, with Peter Eötvös conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. 

In February, we heard Vladimir Jurowski conduct Szymanowski's Third with the LPO at the South Bank: gorgeous, shimmering textures, so perfumed one could swoon. It was a pertfectly valid reading and beautiful.  Boulez, however, intuits the savagery beneath the shining surface, and .Eötvös replacing him due to illness, respects this approach. The Song of the Night can only emerge under cover of darkness, when the worldly market place is hushed and "the market of the stars" is revealed. "This night, Leo, and Orion, Andromeda and Mercury shine crimson!"  The 13th century mystic Jalaal'ad-Din Rumi writes about a love so deep that it's cosmic, yet only revealed in secret. Persians knew their astronomy and astrology. "This night, Saturn casts  his malign control and Venus sails in the golden drizzle". The stars are exquisite, but they control fate and cannot be reached by mortal men.Whoever these lovers are, they're not fated to be together except in dreams.

As if shielding the poet in a night garden, Szymanowski uses a huge orchestra to create a lush, exotic atmosphere. Yet note how Szymanowski immediately establishes two separate currents: the dense "undergrowth" in low winds and strings, and high stings screaming alarm. "O nie spij, druhu, nocy tej" (O, sleep not, dearest friend this night") sings the tenor, Steve Davislim. The chorus repeats the dense textures this time, but through by the extreme high tessitura of the violin (Gordan Nikolitch).  Patterns within patterns. Szymanowski's writing Persian art into his music. Throughout this symphony, violin and singer seem to duet, separated by the vast crescendi in the orchestra and choir. A shy lilting dance led by winds, then Nikolitch soaring forth. Pizzicato, sudden irruptions of brass, even a kind of wayward march: a sense of alert anticipation. This night is not restful. The long middle section is full of incident, but then, silence, out of whch Davislim sings, with minimal accompaniment. "This night God and I are alone!". Cymbals unleash crescendi: we are hearing what the poet sees in the universe. The solo violin re-emerges, almost impossibly high pitched and pure. Boulez manages to hint at perverse Baudelairean undercurrents. Eötvös and the LSO aren't quite so unsettling, but Davislim sings so idiomatically that he'd be a top choice as the Shepherd in Król Roger. The parts are linked, for the Shepherd represents danger as well as liberation. Zamilknięciem wiąże język Lecz ja mówię bez języka nocy tej! (surrounding silence ties my tongue but I speak without my tongue tonight) .

The programme was big and Eötvös conducted Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta with more vigour. The first movement was a little too diffuse, though Eötvös delineated the separate subgroups  in the Allegro and Adagio cleanly. Nicolaj Znaider was the soloist in Bartók's Violin Concerto no 2. Almost any companion piece to Szymanowski's Symphony no 3 will pale in comparison, especially since the violin part there is so strange and disturbing. But Boulez chose the programme well, for the concerto is provocative in its own way. The solo part taunts and twists away from the orchestra as elusively as the part  in Szymanowski's symphony. Znaider played with grace and assurance, exploding passionately in the wild cadenza. Utterly apposite to the deeper meaning of the symphony. 

This concert is available online on BBC Radio 3. Listen for Znaider and Davislim, who has exceptional stage presence. Get the recording of Szymanowski's Third on DG with the Weiner Philharmoniker conducted by Pierre Boulez for a more intense performance.  Later this year Valery Gergiev will be conducting all four Szymanowski symphonies, combined with Brahms, not the first composer that springs to mind in this connection. All the more reason to hear what Gergiev does with Szymanowski.  

Tetzlaff Szymanowski Eötvös LSO Barbican

Karol Szymanowski was always "dangerous". Populist music history consigns composers into neat little boxes which don't reflect reality. Schoenberg, for example, is still imagined as the Big Bad Wolf. Szymanowski's  exotic perfumes atre  misunderstood. Szymanowski's neither Schoenberg nor Hollywood, but completely unique. No way was the Polish Communist Party likely to honour a former aristocrat, and a modernist at that. So Szymanowski was assigned, in the popular mind, as some lush byway no-one ventured near. When Pierre Boulez revealed that he'd studied Szymanowski since the 1940's, there were some who were shocked. But Boulez learned his Szymanowski from the scores, not from populist clichés. Listen to his outstanding recording of Szymanowski's Third Symphony and Violin Concerto No 1  (my review here). It's transformational, even for those who've known Simon Rattle's pioneering recordings from the 1980's. (photo of Tetzlaff by Alexandra Vosding).

When the Barbican announced that Boulez would conduct Szymanowski in two concerts, many bought tickets the moment they went on sale last year. Boulez has since had eye problems and had to pull out, but Christian Tetzlaff, with whom he made that remarkable recording, was able to play the Violin Concerto with the LSO. Peter Eötvös, who has known Boulez for decades, conducted. Obviously the LSO and Eötvös are not the same as the Weiner Philharmonker and Boulez, but Tetzlaff was able to turn the situation to good advantage. The recording was for posterity. The Barbican concert allowed Tetzlaff to play with a greater degree of freedom. Absolutely in command, he played even more vigorously, taking risks one might not dare otherwise.  At times, he stressed the angular, edgy aspects of the piece so it felt even more uncompromisingly modern.

As Jim Samson said in his book, The Music of Karol Szymanowski (1981), in the Violin Concert no 1 "the formal scheme is totally unique and represents an ingenious solution to the problem of building extended structures without resorting to sonata form". We can hear the seeds of Boulez's own music being sown in the almost chaotic proliferation of sub groups and themes within the orchestra,  contrasted with extended violin cantilenas, soaring high above the orchestra, so refined and so rarified that they seem to propel the music into new stratospheres. I thought of Dérive 2 and even Dérive 3 and the way Boulez keeps generating multiple and simultaneous layers of inventiveness. Mandelbrot patterns, in music, mathematically precise, yet full of the vigour of natural, organic growth.

Szymanowski used to be described as a kind of Bartók manqué because he only came to Polish folk music late in life, disregarding the fact that he'd long been an accomplished composer attuned to Stravinsky and Debussy decades before. So, with a wicked grin, Tetzlaff launched into Bartók's Violin Sonata no 1/3 the "Melodia", exaggerating the dynamics it so it sounded extraordinarily like Szymanowski. Extreme pianissimo, almost inaudible, but clearly felt, the bow hardly seeming to move. A tiny tap on the wood before sailing off into the kind of wild, high tessitura Szymanowski loved. Tetzlaff's got a sense of humour, turning the Bartók/Szymanowski cliché upside down. He probably wouldn't dare do this in a regular concert, but as an encore, it was a brilliant act of daring.  I was transfixed by his hands and technical control. My friend noticed how the LSO violinists were spellbound.  Virtuosi we can hear quite often. Tetzlaff in sardonic mode is something special. (The photo shows Szymanowski at the centre, with Fitelberg, Szigeti, Roussel, Reiner and Arnold Bax).

Debussy's Nocturnes, with which the programme started, seemed untypically imprecise, almost slack. Possibly  Eötvös knew that most of the audience had come for Szymanowski. Certainly he marshalled the orchestra for the Violin Concerto extremely well, so Tetzlaff's "Boulezian" approach flowed through seamlessly. Eötvös has been conductiung Boulez's music for so long that he has the idiom almost by instinct. Boulez has also made Scriabin's Le Poème de l'extase distinctly his own, but the piece is so well known that it hardly needs his imprint. Here, Eötvös gloried in the lush colours of the music, connecting Scriabin with Szymanowski's eclectic exoticism and oddly enough to the same fire that burns in Boulez. Populat cliché portrays Boulez as cold, but passion burns just as intensely when it's white-hot and pure. If only people would listen to Boulez, instead of rabbiting assumptions!
Eötvös will be conducting Szymanowski's Symphony no 3 at the Barbican on May 8th. Get the Boulez recording. Lots more on Szymanowski (and Boulez) on this site - use labels or search box)

Jurowski Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony South Bank

High hopes for Vladimir Jurowski's Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall tonight :after a wonderful performance of Peter Eötvös Shadows. It was an unusual set up - soloists in the centre of the orchestra, brass and winds backwards to the audience, so their sound was naturally oblique. A large ensemble, yet conducted with such sensitivity that Eötvös's gossamer textures shone beautifully.

Similar refinement for Liszt's Piano Concerto no 2. Alexander Markovich isn't the most restrained of pianists, but tonight he seemed transformed. Beautiful lambent passagework, well integrated into the orchestra, superbly well judged.

Jurowski is a master of fine detail and balance, which can be virtues with pieces like Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony where so much is happening throughout the huge ensemble. On the other hand, too much attention to detail blurs lines and dulls colours. Zemlinsky structured the symphony, of alternating song and orchestral interlude. It's almost a series of concentric circles, each section in its own orbit, but given horizontal coherence by short snatches of theme that return, as if in cyclic motion. In Indian cosmology, the Sacred Wheel is the symbol of time and growth, erosion and renewal. Thus Zemlinsky incorporates the gist of Tagore's text into the very substance of his music. Like a wheel, the Lyric Symphony surges forward as its sections turn, but the movement needs to be made clear rather than submerged in detail.

Melanie Diener was excellent.  The fourth song is in many ways the critical moment in the whole symphony. Diener understood that the voice should sound young and fragile, but it's also powerful, for it represents the future. That combination of vulnerability and forcefulness isn't easy. The Lyric Symphony is infinitely more than a sex romp,  just as Das Lied von derr Erde is more than a hymn to alcohol abuse.

Zemlinsky is careful to emphasize the still, watchful mood, so the words Sprich zu mir, Geliebter penetrate, even though they're quietly enunciated.Around the words, he writes detail - stings and weinds murmuring like the trees in the text, but critically they are background, receding into the distance. The beauty of the moment is lost when the background intrudes on the voice.
 
Thomas Hampson showed the gravitas of greater age, which isn't at all inappropriate in this music. He made his final lines glow with meaning : Ich halte meine Lampe in die Höhe, um dir  auf deinem Weg zu leuchten. An artist like Hampson always has something to show us. Jurowski had much better soloists than Salonen had two years ago when he conducted Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony with the Philharmonia. Yet Salonen's reading was more focused, although his orchestra needed much  more rehearsal time, having exhausted themselves into a magnificent Gurrelieder shortly before. I5 rem9nded me of old recordings where technical stanadrds are poor, but there's verve.

Orchestrally, what would have helped Jurowski and the LPO was less attention to minutiae, more to the overall dynamics. Rich as Zemlinsky's textures are they're not Hollywood so much as delicately transparent washes, c9ontrasted with moments of glory. Träume laasen sich nicht eingefangen (Dreams don't let them selves be captured). As Jurowski demonstrated in Liszt and Eötvös, he can do gossamer beautifully, so why not apply the restraint to Zemlinsky? Details are wonderful,, but when they're all over polished and given equal weight, textures become congested and hold up flow. The Wheel should move forward easily, not become enthralled to its own beauty.

Please look at my numerous posts on Zemlinsky, (Here on LS, a symphony I lived with and loved for years) Jurowski, Mahler, Schoenberg and related composers. PLENTY on this site, take the time to explore.

Coming up this week

Coming up soon on this site : György Kurtág Kafka Fragements, a preview of Alexander Raskatov's A Dog's Heart, Franz Schreker Irrelohe and at last the second CD of Ma Sicong Music for Violin and Piano. which has been top of my listening list for months. So beautiful that I haven't been able to write well enough to do it justice. Strange, how the more you love something the harder it is to fully express.

Which is why I've been slower than usual about writing up Kurtág Kafka Fragements, at the Barbican Hall with Dawn Upshaw. This is a piece I care about passionately. It's radical because it presents a different listening experience, where the music "happens" when ideas connect on a deep level in the listener's psyche. Maybe that's what happens with all music, but more so with Kurtág's extreme concision. Ideas distilled into homeopathic intensity that expand in your soul. Peter Sellars' staging, on the other hand, ignores Kurtág's whole concept. Thanks to Sellars, now Kurtág undergoes the equivalent of what would happen to European and Japanese art cinema if it were remade for daytime TV soaps. Full review coming up in Opera Today.

This is particularly tragic because the Barbican has been doing wonderful things for contemporary music and opera. Last year they did Eötvös's Angels in America, and Michael van der Aa's After Life. This is courageous programming, for which the Barbican deserves praise, particularly as the South Bank has lost its vision. In the past they've done the Saariaho operas, which Peter Sellars' semi staging did wonders for, even if his Kurtág was a self-indulgent misreading. Starting soon, the Barbican's continuing its acclaimed series of baroque opera, with Handel's Alcina. This is important because Barbican baroque choices are very good indeed. Definitely one of the hippest venues in London.

At the ENO, Simon McBurney's Raskatov A Dog's Heart looks extremely interesting. Anything premiered at The Holland Festival is likely to be challenging, so we're lucky that the ENO has brought this over. Fascinating concept, executed by Complicite, one of the finest modern drama ensembles around. This is serious drama, real music theatre people, as opposed to directors moonlighting from elsewhere. I've seen clips and read up on it - this should be exciting. Please come back to this site as I'll be writing lots. And get to the show, which starts 20th.

And of course Francesco Cilea Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House Thursday. When this was done at another venue two years ago some of my friends adored it (others said it was toffee).  I missed it then, but heard it on BBC Radio 3. So I can't miss it now with a megastar cast. Angela Gheorghiu, Alessandro Corbelli, and Jonas Kaufmann in a role that should suit him well.

Eötvös Angels in America Barbican BBC London

Here is a link to the review of Angels in America in Opera Today.

Angels in America, Peter Eötvös’s opera based on the Tony Kushner plays, received its London premiere at the Barbican Hall. This was very high profile. David Robertson conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance that will be broadcast internationally, online on www.bbc.co.uk/radio3..............Ultimately, Angels in America works on stage because the subject is so powerful. It packs such an emotional punch that it would be hard not to be moved by the human drama in the first part. A lot of choices had to be made when Eötvös and his librettist reduced Kushner’s seven hour saga. That’s all the more reason why decisions had to be taken for maximum dramatic and musical effect. As an opera, Angels in America might have served the subject better had it been less dependent on replicating the play, and taken a more original vision."

Eötvös Angels in America, Barbican

Tony Kushner's Angels in America is an icon, bigger than "just" a play (or plays) because it commemorates the AIDS pandemic, or rather its first phase. In the early 80's, AIDS didn't have a name. It was terrifying because no-one knew why so many healthy young men were dying horrific deaths of what we called then "Karposi's Sarcoma",  a cancer of the very old. Then, ostensibly straight men started dying too, and their partners, and even militant homophobes.  Everyone panicked. Dreadful as the epidemic was, AIDs was a turning point. It exposed hypocrisy and prejudice, and ironically did a lot to bring homosexuality out of the closet.

For personal reasons, I've avoided the play as I lived through those times. "The haunted Castro and City Beach".  Thirty years on, it's amazing how things have changed, and how rapidly the medical establishment responded. Remember the shock waves when Princess Diana kissed an AIDS patient? It was one time when society did pull together to fight what seemed then a plague of medieval proportions.Western people don't die of AIDS anymore, as long as they can afford health care and medication.  AIDS isn't a gay thing - the plague has moved to the Third World. Angels in America could be transcribed for southern Africa.

Peter Eötvös turned it into an opera, premiered in 2004, and at last it's come to the Barbican, London. David Roberston conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the performance was recorded for later international, online broadcast on www.bbc.co.uk/radio3. Huge audience turnout: the upper floors of the Barbican were filled to capacity.  Not for the music, perhaps, (many walked out), but because the subject is so important.

Eötvös compresses Kushner's work into 2 1/2 hours. In the first part, vignettes of people experiencing death in their own way. Prior Walter (David Adam Moore) is a gay man dumped by his frightened lover. (such things happened and can't be judged in hindsight). Roy Cohn (Kelly Anderson), the bully who thinks he can't be touched,  and Joe Pitt (Omar Ebrahim), the hapless married Mormon. This concentrates dramatic focus on human relationships, and is very moving. Indeed, the fact that parts are doubled extends the scope into other lives. Brian Asawa is subtly excellent, in a variety of roles, his rich countertenor hovering beyond easy classification. Everyone dumps on non-white menials, even the dying. Some things don't change.

In the second part, Kushner extends his panorama to the afterlife and to Heaven with its angels of different continents.  Prior is restored to life for reasons not particularly intelligible. But then fate is unintelligible. There are people who lived right through the heart of the storm who never became ill.  It's much less coherent, but works in an impressionistic way. The first part needs reinforcement, and the abstraction of the second works in an impressionistic sort of way.

Eötvös's music illustrates the text nicely. Marimbas and electronics to create weird, surreal sounds, percussion to mark tension, lovely cello and violin melodies  to enhance moments of individual reverie.  As an extension of the play, the music is usefully mood-enhancing, so in that sense it works.  On the other hand, I'm not sure it would work as music without the power of the subject matter and Kushner's dramatic momentum. It's episodic and reactive rather than development.

David Robertson led the BBC Symphony Orchestra. If anyone can give this music bite, he can.  Very good singing and acting by the principals (named above) and other parts, who, just as in life, may seem minor but are actually valid in their own ways. Julia Migenes was superb as the neurotic housewife Harper Pitt (male name, female part). Janice Hall was hampered by cliche roles - a rabbi whose music veers towards almost racist stereotype, and an out-of-towner lost in the Bronx. I enjoyed this concert staging (directed by David Gately) because it showed how the simple resources of a concert staging can have a huge impact, done as thoughtfully as this. The lighting effects were superb, evoking huge vistas in the imagination. I "saw" the stars in the heavens and the lights of a night time city. When the Angel pops out of the organ loft, she's gleaming white. I enjoyed this, but ultimately, Angels in America isn't an opera in the sense that the music is fundamental to the concept.  This music extends the play, in the way that well written film music extends the dominant narrative.  But what a narrative, what a subject!  It's too important to miss. Better and longer version of this NOW in Opera Today.

If you want to hear really original, intense music about death and the afterlife, seek out Brian Ferneyhough's Shadowtime, or better still, the Pierre Audi staging of Claude Vivier's Kopernikus.  Neither of them are as immediately accessible as Eötvös, but musically, they're infinitely deeper and more rewarding.  Kopernickus I didn't get at all, at first, but have grown to love intensely because there are so many levels in it.  An angel jumps out of the sky, too! It was made in 1980 but so advanced it's still fresh and powerful. Get it here
Reves D'Un Marco Polo - Claude Vivier, Asko Ensemble
  .