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  

Gothic resistance fighter - Walter Braunfels Die Verkündigung

Walter Braunfels was one of the more important German composers of the early 20th century, related to Ludwig Spohr and connected to Pfitzner, Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Hindemith and others. His opera Die Vögel was the flagship of the Deutsche Grammophon Entartete Musik series, so popular that it's now almost standard repertoire. He was even featured (briefly) at last year's Proms. So why sin't Braunfels known even in these circles?

His Die Verkündigung (op50) was broadcast last week, a performance last year from Munich Radio Orchestra conductd by Ulf Schirmer. It was an important event, for Braunels was connected to Munich's artistic circles, and the only recording of Die Verkündigung has been out of print for years.

The new Munich Die Verkündigung is fascinating. It's very lively. Juliane Banse sings the heroine Violaine, a  taxing part where the tessitura leaps upwards suddenly from nowhere and has to fly. I've been following her for years: this is one of her best performances ever. Robert Holl and Hanna Schwarz sing her parents, and Janina Baechle her sister Mara. Adrian Erod sings Jakobaus, to whom Violane is betrothed, and Matthis Klink sings Peter von Ulm the Leper.

Peter von Ulm builds great cathedrals, but contracts leprosy. In a gesture of kindness, Violane kisses him, but the kiss is misinterpreted, and Jakobaus drops Violane. Eight years pass. It's Xmas and it's cold. Br Br Br the townsfolk recite in mock stylized wit, while "medieval" bells and drums sound and dog latin seems to be spoken. Peter is back and he's cured, "with the skin of a child". Mara is holding her dead daughter. Violane holds her while Mara reads the Christmas story. The child breathes again but now her eyes are blue like Violane not dark like her mother. Mara throws Violane into a ditch, but she's rescued. At which point, father returns from pilgrimage and the truth about the kiss is revealed. Violane has taken on Peter's illness and promptly dies. A lot more dramatic than it sounds, and brightly written. (the semi-spoken sequence is brilliant). There are even references to  Die Vögel in the jerky staccato rhythms, and lovely off-key horns..

The opera is based on a medieval miracle play, but curiously, it's not overly religious, even though Braunfels and the playwright, Paul Claudel, were both extremely devout Catholics. Indeed, on strictly liturgical terms, Die Verkündigung is blasphemy for it's about an ordinary woman who can raise the dead and cure the sick. God is not involved, though the Virgin Mary is implicated.  But maybe that's the point, for you don't have to be a saint to do miracles.

Notice when the opera was written - 1933/5 - when Braunfels' career was strangled by the Nazis. Die Verkündigung is about faith and the power that good people have to overcome evil. Claudel also wrote the play which Arthur Honegger set as Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher, also in 1935. (read more here and here).And Braunfels wrote another opera, Jeanne d'Arc (Szenen aus dem leben  der heiligen Joihanna) between 1939 and 1943. In retrospect, his "inner exile" is clear.

It's significant, too, that Braunfels adapts Claudel's play,written in French, to German  and to an unequivocally "Germanic" pseudo-medieval style, complete with long spoken passages. The sort of thing the Nazis admired, without understanding the true meaning of medieval piety. K A Hartmann was to do much the same thing in his Simplicus Simplicissimus.
Please read lots more about Braunfels on this site - more on this genre here than any other!

Hindemith Cardillac Vienna - full broadcast

Full broadcast of Cardillac, Paul Hindemith's iconic opera from 1926, available on BBC Radio 3 online, on demand for 5 more days. It comes from the Vienna State Opera, recorded late lat year. Franz Welser-Möst conducts.

Juha Uusitalo is Cardillac the goldsmith, who thinks strictly in terms of his craft. Even his daughter means nothing to him, because, unlike gold, women can't be forged and twisted into shape. Cardillac is so obsessed with the jewellery he makes that he can't bear to let go. Everyone who buys a piece gets murdered. Control freak anal retentive to the nth degree. It's probably impossible to make Cardillac sympathetic, even when he's torn apart by the mob. Juliane Banse sings Cardillac's daughter, who loves her Dad despite knowing he's nuts. Her lover is The Officer (Herbert Lippert).

The plot's fiendishly complicated, a lot like the intricate jewellery Cardillac designs, so don't expect to get it easily without visuals the first time. It grows on you, though, even though emotionally the opera pushes you away, just as Cardillac himself pushes people away.  Please read my analysis of the 1985 Munich production, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and Jim Zychowicz's review of its re-release.There's also a more recent Paris production, conducted by Kent Nagano. There are at least 3 audio recordings, of which Keilberth (Fisher-Dieskau/Donald Grobe/Elisabeth Söderström is most interesting. It's not "obscure", but one of the more seminal works of the period. Just not very "feelgood".

See the production photos on the BBC site. Much is made of this production being based on silent film, though the Paris production had the same concept. But I think it works fine, to bring out the stark film noirish aspects of the story. Cardillac himself thinks in black and white terms, and the music reflects that off-centre edginess. Lots more on Hindemith on this site !

Heinrich Kaminski Dorian Music

Who was Heinrich Kaminski (1886-1946)? Admired by Arnold Schoenberg and a leading figure in German music circles, he's largely forgotten today, though there are signs of a major revival. Listen to Kaminski's Dorische-musik (Dorian Music) on the Berliner Philharmoniker website. Star conductor Andris Nelsons conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker, soloists Amihai Grosz,  Ludwig Quandt and Andreas Buschatz.

It's a gloriously affirmative work, passionately reasserting the ideals of Bach and Beethoven. "Music", Kaminski said, should motivate people to "trace the roots of life and the meaning of human existence". He saw his duty as "bearing witness to the light".

Kaminski's Dorian music starts without hesitation and goes straight into full development, buoyed up by confident purpose. This isn't abstract music for its own sake. Beethovenian forward thrust, direct quotes from Bach. To quote the Berliner Philharmoniker notes "from polyphonic concentration....Kaminski creates free flowing spatial music characterized by extreme tempo and rhythmic shifts....It is a genuinely forward-looking work, gripping in its unique mix of eruptive energy and mystical immersion".
 
It's amazingly uplifting, and spiritually powerful. Yet, note, it was written and first performed in 1934, by Herrmann Scherchen in Switzerland. What, one might think was there to be so confident about? Kaminski's response was, on July 4, 1933, to create an “order of those that love”. The rules of this order demanded that its members “hate no one and nothing, and must not be seduced into hate by evil willfulness or abusive actions. Hate is to be overcome by No-Hate”. Advocates of non-violence, like Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi  think that breaking cycles of hate might just work, though Kaminski's faith in the context of the horrors that were to come might seem naive.

Kaminski was involved with the liberal Munich avant garde, from which his ideals may have sprung, but he was also part of the "inner resistance" of K A Hartmann and others. Perhaps, too, Kaminksi's principles may have come from his father. Kaminski senior had been a Catholic priest, who'd quit the priesthood on principle after the First Vatican Council in 1869/70 (the one that introduced papal infallibility). So in a sense, we owe Kaminski's birth to his father's opposition to the Pope. But the Kaminski family were originally Jewish, from Poland. This status seemed to have confounded the Nazis. He lost his job in Berlin in 1933, apparently for political reasons, but his music wasn't banned until 1938. Then the ban was lifted in 1941 because they thought he was a quarter Jew not a half-Jew. Racial stereotypes aren't rational. Life wasn't kind to Kaminski. He lost most of his family during the war and died himself soon after. But when I listen to his Dorian Music, it's vital, humanistic spirit seems unextinguishable. The piece isn't available on CD, though there are clips on Universal Editions. All the more reason to cherish the Berliner-Philharmoniker performance, which is perhaps as good as it gets. Here are other sources of information, the Kaminski website and an interesting German website.

Walter Braunfels - Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz

Walter Braunfels' Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (Fantastic Appearances of a Theme by Hector Berlioz), Op. 25 (1914-17) is a fascinating work, though you'd never guess from the truncated rump that was done at Prom 68. I was so upset that it's taken me ages to write about the complete(ish) piece, but here at last, as promised. Die Vögel, Te Deum,and Jeanne d'Arc to follow. Fantastic Appearances and  Die Vögel  need to be heard together, for both were written at about the same time, when Braunfels was fighting in the First World War. Like so many of his generation that war changed everything and ushered in what we now call the "Modern" age. Braunfels is not escaping into retro Romanticism but confronting the issues of his times without compromise.

Phantastische Erscheinungen deals with a single theme from Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust., specifically the scene where Faust and Méphistophélès enter the Auerbach tavern in Leipzig. Both of them are out of their usual element, among "normal" people, so there's more to the scene than divertissement. They've come to learn about life and "le fatras de la philosophie". Brander sings the song about rats invading a kitchen. Méphistophélès's response is the song of the flea. A king becomes obssessed with a pet flea and soon the whole court is infested with fleas. "Mais ce qui fut bien pire, C’est que les gens de cour,Sans en oser rien dire,Se grattaient tout le jour"  What's significant is that the courtiers were too cowed to object, so they suffered. The solution, says Méphistophélès, is to squash the fleas forthwith. Nothing "Romantic" about that.

Braunfels begins with an opening like a vista, then zones in on the theme. The moderato variation is glorious, as if Braunfels is describing the splendour of the court, but that's quickly blown away by the turbulent "gusts of wind" in the Gemessen. Storm clouds ahead, even allusions to Faust and Méphistophélès flying through the skies. This "Appearance" is wild, the relentless "winds" pushing higher and higher. No "sudden end" in this part, but stomping ostinato building towards a climax. The unstoppable march of pounding feet ?

In the next three variations, Braunfels examines the basic theme more wistfully, as if he's looking back on more innocent times from different angles, trying to reflect on how things came about. Notice the endings, where in the original, Méphistophélès suggest a sudden, crushing solution. Here they're muted, even open ended. There was a lot of good in Wilhelmine Germany and indeed in German culture as a whole. There's even something Beethovenian in the grace of the Ruhig. Perhaps Braunfels wasn't the kind of man to do violent Putsches. In this work, he considers a small theme from all perspectives.

The Ruhig is transitional, rather than purely "restful", for Braunfels is now looking ahead. The 7th variation is mercurial, like a sprightly dance, but gradually the darker undrtones draw in. All three variations in this penultimate group start with the same exposition, developing different ways. The 8th Appearance is marked by dizzying, spiralling diminuendos, which lead to whizzing, strident alarums. Hence the very short tenth segment, dominated by a single trumpet. The "winds imagery" whips round it, taking over completely in the turbulent 11th variation, a highly dramatic, demonic Moderato. You can almost picture smoke rising from Hell, storms tearing across the heavens. The final variation, is march-like, loud and expansive. Even so the rising cadences soar above, as if searching beyond into the distance. For me, the image of Faust flying above the landscape, borne on the heavy wings of Satan, til eventually textures open outward in an ending that's almost like a chorale. Is Faust redeemed? Braunfels doesn't commit. The Finale restates the basic theme with elements from all the variations - bright, manic, chilling. The Phantastische Erscheinungen are so tightly bound together, that taking excerpts out of context doesn't do justice to this fascinating composer.

Hans Krása at the West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival

That's Hans Krása (1899-1944). The occasion this photo was taken? It's a still from the Nazi propaganda film glorifying Theresienstadt, the model camp where inmates could live happily and healthily and make music. Krasa is listening attentively to Karl Ancerl conduct the Theresienstadt Orchestra. Everyone knows darn well they're being used but it it buys the camp time, what choice do they have?

Great opportunity to heard Krása's Passacaglia and Fugue plus Tanec for String Trio at the new West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival. There are two festivals with similar names but this one's strictly chamber music, and new. It's run by Lawrence Power the violist, familar to many from his work with the Nash Ensemble. Other Nash players included are Paul Watkins, Annabelle Meare and Stephanie Gonley. Also taking part are Anthony Marwood, Simon Crawford Philips, Bjørg Lewis (Mrs Paul), and Guy Johnston. Chamber musicians interconnect through many different networks. The Nash Ensemble played these two Hans Krása works for string trio at the Theresienstadt/Terezin Memorial weekend at the Wigmore Hall in June 2010. Read more about that here and use the "Theresienstadt" label on the right.

West Wycombe is on the western outskirts of High Wycombe, so is easy to reach by car up or down the M40/M25. Famous for the 18th century Hell Fire Club. Good 16th century pub on the main street (or was), so you can make a day of it. Lawrence Power grew up near there, I used to live there once too. Nice place.Musically, though, it's bound to be worth going to just for the concerts, as these are among the best players in the country. Also on the programmes, Dvorak, Brahms, Schumann and Shostakovich. More details HERE.

Walter Braunfels - Fantastic appearances of a theme of Berlioz

Tonight's Prom 68 could be a milestone. Manfred Honeck conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Walter Braunfels, Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (Fantastic appearances on a theme from Berlioz).  Braunfels (1882-1954)  is a bit of a cult composer, since relatively few have heard of him, but those who do are passionate. Honeck is one of Braunfels's champions, so this Prom might give Braunfels the prominence he deserves.

The Berlioz theme Braunfels is referring to comes from Berlioz The Damnation of Faust. All year we're having one Faust inspired work after another, from Liszt's Faust Symphony, to Mephisto Waltz,  to the revival of Gounod's Faust at the Royal Opera House, starting soon. Terry Gilliam's Faust in Jackboots ego trip doesn't count.

Braunfels specifically pinpoints the scene where Faust and Méphistophélès enter the Leipzig tavern. Both of them are out of their usual element, among "normal" people, so there's more to the scene than divertissement. Braunfels focuses on the song of the flea, which Méphistophélès sings to describe the way a mad king becomes obsessed with a flea, til his whole court are infested and suffer. Braunfels was writing during the 1914-18 war, although he was conscripted and fought in the western front. It was a traumatic period. He was injured and converted to Catholicism (from being Lutheran). Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz develops the basic theme from different angles. We hear Méphistophélès cynical swagger, and a purer, more lyrical approach, which might be Faust. Images of hell, rising from low rumblings in the orchestra,  diminuendos and rising passages, movements up and down. Smoke? Dreams? Tonight, after Prom 68, I will write much more, so please come back and bookmark/subscribe.

This week I've been listening again to Walter Braunfels Die Vögel (the Birds) which comes from the same period as the Fantastical variations. In Die Vögel, birds do what fleas do in Faust : the opera is altogether more complex and sophisticated. Indeed, Die Vögel and the Phantastische Erscheinungen need to be heard together for full impact. The opera is sumptuously beautiful, but with a kick.

There are two recordings of Die Vogel, the first being Lothar Zagrosek's 1996 recording for Decca. It is outstanding, the soprano Helen Kwon truly captures the surreal birdsong which Braunfels incorporates into the part. (Link here to Zagrosek's The Birds on amazon). I hate to say it, but avoid the 2010 LA Opera production which is on DVD. The conducting (Conlon) is leaden and deadening. It is not enough simply to do an opera because it's obscure. This approach is why composers like Braunfels don't get the respect they are due. Die Vögel is much more intelligent and sophisticated, and indeed more musically adventurous as the DVD would suggest.  It's the curse of the myth that Schoenberg somehow "forced" anyone to be modern. Everyone was modern in their own ways. No-one was deliberately retrogressive. I'll write more about Die Vögel when I have time. Until then, please explore this site where there is a great deal in depth about other composers "suppressed" by changes in taste and politics. For more on Braunfels, HERE is a link to a very good German site about him (with English translation)

Don't forget, lots coming up, please explore this site and come back. (try searching Schreker, Korngold, Berg, Haas, Krasa, Theresienstadt, Ullmann, Eisler, Zemlinsky etc for more goodies)

Bílá nemoc - Hugo and Pavel Haas

A dictator stands on a balcony addressing the masses. "We are a great country, we need space to live" The crowds roar in hysterical approval. Might is Right, so it's OK to declare war on "small rotten countries" next door. Bílá nemoc, or The White Plague is a fascinating film because it was made in Czechoslovakia in 1937. The Czechs knew what a larger country meant by Lebensraum, but the rest of Europe wasn't listening. The script was written by Karel Čapek, who wrote the text for Janáček's The Makropulous Case and much radical social commentary. Čapek died of natural causes in 1938, thereby escaping the Nazis, who were after him. Watch this movie and see why.

This film is also interesting because it was directed by and starred Hugo Haas, brother of Pavel Haas, the composer who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. Hugo Haas was a big star in Czechoslovakia, working until at least 1940, starring in films with Lída Baarová, whom Goebbels made his mistress. Pavel, his elder brother, wrote film scores for sevearl of Hugo's movies. One I've heard (film: Mazlíček,The Pet) sounds more like Hanns Eisler at his most didactic than Haas's chamber music, but it fits the nature of the film.  Pavel was sent to Theresienstadt and later Auschwitz. Hugo Haas manged to get to Hollywood, where by 1945, he starred in John Wayne movies and in King Solomon's Mines, and made his own B movies. [Since writing this, I've been able to see quite a few of Haas's American movies which are of an extremely high standrad]

In Bílá nemoc,there's a sudden frame of a man in the howling mob outside the Dictator's palace (which is monumentalist Art Deco and filled with geormetric symbols) . It's Dr Galen (Hugo Haas). There's a mysterious plague in the country, which starts as white spots on the body and kills everyone it touches. Everyone's paranoid about contamination. Galen has a cure but he's not allowed to use it because his terms are too high. So he's only allowed to treat the destitute in Ward 13, who don't count. But those he treats, survive. Gradually the plague spreads, and the paranoia. The Dictator visits the research hospital but Galen isn't allowed near him. Galen is anti-war, and that's another form of plague. Eventually, Baron Krog, the second most powerful man in the land gets sick and is saved when he promises to respect Galen's ideas.  Galen meets the dictator. Both of them fought in the Great War, but the Dictator believes war is a good thing and Galen thinks otherwise. Soon, the Dictator gets infected too, has a change of heart, signs ceasefire documents, and summons Galen. Galen tries to pass through the howling crowds, but they confront him when he talks anti-war and they beat him to death. No-one now to stop the plague, or the war.

PLENTY more on this site and in-depth too, on Czech and Weimar music and film, Entartete Musik, Theresienstadt composers, anti-war and non-violence. For me this subject is a principle of belief. Please  explore

Erich Korngold Die Kathrin - rare clips

Many thanks to Brendan Carroll for these clips from Erich Korngold's last opera Kathrin.  They come from an extremely rare recording issued only in Austria, featuring a Viennese tenor Walter Anton Dotzer. This Serenade comes from near the beginning, when Francois, the hero, serenades Kathrin outside her bedroom window. .Gorgeous set piece but the story isn't quite as simple as it sounds. The opera is set in 1930 for one thing, in the "present", and the subject is not quite as sugary as one might assume. Interestingly, the librettist is Ernst Decsey, Hugo Wolf's devoted follower and first biographer.

Kathrin is a servant and Francois is a soldier. He seduces her by moonlight and ships out, as soldiers do.  She gets pregnant and loses her job - grim reality. As happens to destitute girls, she ends up in dangerous situations, which involve lust, deception and murder. Francois turns up unexpectedly - he's now a freelance musician.  He thinks she's killed the villain and goes to jail on her behalf. Years later he's free and goes wandering in the mountains and sings the Wanderer Lied below. He gets a job serenading a woman who turns out to be Kathrin ! All's well after all.  Please see my numerous other posts on Korngold and related composers.

Weimar lives! Mischa Spoliansky Melinda Hughes

"Life's a swindle, life is short but greed's always in season"
Mischa Spoliansky (1898-1985) wrote hits for Weimar cabaret in Berlin, and for music theatre including Es liegt in der Luft (1928) with which Marlene Dietrich made her stage debut.  Obviously after 1933 Spoliansky had to get out quick. But the spirit of Weimar Cabaret never dies as  long as there are creative people with independent minds.

Melinda Hughes is classically trained but she's  made a name as a composer, lyricist and performer of radical, modern cabaret. Her new CD Smoke and Noise is now out on Nimbus Alliance.  The title refers to Schall und Rauch, a nightclub Spoliansky worked for long ago.  His music hasn't been forgotten as he was an extremely successful composer for movies after he relocated to London. There's even an LP of him playing his greatest hits but this is the first new tribute.and easily available CD.  Spoliansky's on the verge of a revival, because his cabaret work connects to contemporary concerns. BCMG is doing a concert of songs by Spoliansky, Hanns Eisler and Stefan Wolpe in May. Get Melinda  Hughes's CD now to prepare, because it's very good.

Hughes  tracked down Spoliansky's music through the Jewish Music Institutre in London and met Steve Edis, whom she describes as "the fount of all knowledge Spoliansky". He played the songs on Spoliansky's own piano and told her the stories behind them.  The new CD features songs from some of Spoliansky's greatest hits like Es liegt in der Luft. You can just imagine Marlene Dietrich smouldering in L'heure bleue, an ironic song about the perfume, wildly popular in the Weimar period. Hughes, who's fluent in German, is pretty good at smouldering too, and has a comic gift.

Mischa Spoliansky's Alles Schwindel (1931) from which the line above comes, must have been explosive at the time, after the Wall Street Crash and rise of fascism.  It's subversive even now, especially with Jeremy Lawrence's English lyrics. Life's a swindle has lines like "Politicians are magicians, they make money disappear". It's a great rousing anthem but the irony is bleak.

Even better is The Smart Set, also from Alles Schwindel, also known as Das Lied der Gesellschaft . Hughes delivers the lines with a cut glass accent so arch that sometimes she deliberately sings up a tone, so it feels like the cut glass is cracking. Which is exactly what the song is about.  Savagely trenchant.

Some may remember Julie Andrews in drag in Victor Victoria. One of Spoliansky's other great successes was Victoria but I don't know if they're connected. Evidently though Spoliansky had sympathie, although he was straight.  Das Lila Lied deals with gay rights - in 1920!   Auf dem Mundharmonica comes from a 1956 show about a circus, but the words are potent. Circuses travel all over Europe. But so did soldiers. The song comes from a musical based on Carl Zuckmayer's play Katarina Knie. The ironic I am a Vamp (1933) is so exuberant, you sing along.

Hughes mixes Spoliansky's originals with songs from her own cabaret Kiss & Tell, like CRUNCH. This song is brilliant. Every line crackles - impossible to quote the best!  Less succesful is Carbon Footprints in my Jimmy Choos whose theme is a bit predictable, but Toy Boy and Smoker's Lament are excellent - both satires on modern pretensions. The combination is sensitively done, since Kiss & Tell's material reflects the political  bite of Weimar cabaret. Although Spoliansky is the focus of this CD, the Kiss & Tell songs are so good that they're worth hearing on their own merits.

Yet not all Weimar music was radical or even leftist.  Long before he moved to Britain and wrote music for movies like Sanders of the River and King Solomon's Mines, Spoliansky was writing for Ufa movies. Close your eyes and wish for happiness is straightforwardly sentimental, though we can't help but hear it tinged with what we know happened later. Similarly the gentle Auf Wiedersehen, but its message is hopeful.  Spoliansky is gone, but we'll meet him again through his music.
HERE is a link to the Mischa Spoliansky website, which has sound and video clips. This CD is on page one.

Kurt Weill in a tutu? ROH

Kurt Weill's "lost" ballet, Zaubernacht, or the Magical Night, premieres at the Royal Opera House in December. It received two performances, one in Berlin in 1922, the next in New York in 1925. Then it went into storage and only surfaced in 2006 when Yale researchers found the locked case in which it was kept - and had to call in a locksmith as there was no key. Aletta Collins is choreographing the production, which is aimed at the Xmas family audience. Better that kids should see Kurt Weill than run of the mill sugar. "As two children fall asleep, a fairy appears to cast a magic spell that brings familiar storybook characters to life". Weill before Brecht.

Could be interesting as it's scored for minimal resources:  solo soprano, piano, two violins, viola, cello, flute, bass, oboe and percussion, so maybe it really will be childlike and magical. It's been staged (with different choreography) in Germany. There's even a recording and Weill refashioned it as Quodlibet. The ROH production is important because it's based on a completely new  critical edition first heard earlier this year in Dessau, but the choreographers are different.

Also interesting to opera people who might not otherwise look at ballet listings is The Prince of the Pagodas. It's Benjamin Britten's only ballet, in which he dabbles in exotic "Oriental" fantasy. more lyrical and energetic than Curlew River, since it was written to be danced to. The production is the famous Kenneth MacMillan version, which hasn't been revived for 15 years.

Carl Orff - Die Kluge, Zurich Opera

Carl Orff's opera Die Kluge (The Clever One) premiered in February 1943, when the Russians routed the Germans at Stalingrad. The plot is based on a story from Brothers Grimm, so Orff could pass it off as recht and gut Fairy Tale. How could the Nazis object?  A tyrannical King appropriates a peasant's possessions, falsely imprisons people and makes insane judgements, such as believing that mules can give birth to foals. He threatens a peasant girl with death unless she can solvce his riddles, which she does, and he makes her his Queen. But no-one is safe from the madman, even at the top. The Queen is banished but yet again survives by being crafty. She convinces the King she loves him. "Nothing is more irrational than love".

Shirley Apthorp  saw the production at Opernhaus Zurich, but still follows the idea that Orff was some kind of Nazi sympathiser. Obviously Orff could not make the moral any clearer or he'd end up in prison like the peasant. Maybe some Nazis got it better than others. Apparently, Die Kluge was praised in Graz and condemned in Cottbus. Of course it's possible that some who applauded cheered because they recognized the double meaning.

The instrumentation and discography of Orff's Die Kluge can be found HERE
Wouldn't the message of Die Kluge have been more obvious had it been paired with K A Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus?  Both pieces are relatively short and use similar unfussy orchestration. They're connected, too, as Hartmann knew Orff and dedicated the work to him.

O Fortuna ! Carl Orff, conundrum

Everyone knows Carmina Burana, even if they think it's the sound track to TV ads. Ironic then, that Carl Orff should be the subject of O Fortuna, the 2008 documentary by Tony Palmer. Because Carmina Burana is so familiar, responses to Carl Orff himself are coloured by "TV thinking", superficial, ill informed and kneejerk, like the cliché that Carmina Burana is a Nazi tract. But Orff deserves deeper analysis. He was a conundrum, a complex person who concealed his inner life even from himself. He's a conundrum. Yet his legacy benefits millions who don't care or know much about European music or history.

Palmer's documentary doesn't attempt psychological depth but presents material that might otherwise lurk in archives. Orff's daughter Godela appears, as do Orff's last two wives. At least one of them is dead. I don't know when the interviews were made, or by whom, but they're valuable sources.  The footage of the last wife, Liselotte, is vivid and moving, probably seen for the first time.

Michael  Kater appears too, to add perspectiuve. "Orff wasn't a Nazi, he hated what they stood for", he says, but Orff also didn't make life difficult for himself. He figured that when Pfiztner and Richard Strauss died he'd be the most important composer in the Reich. Big consideration. Always broke, he accepted money from the State, but that didn't automatically compromise him.  Ralph Vaughan Wiliams and Sibelius did so too. More worrying was that he didn't help Kurt Huber, whose White Rose cell resisted Hitler, yet later claimed he'd actively helped. It's relevant that Karl Amadeus Hartmann, who knew everyone involved, treated Orff with sympathy. Unless you've lived in a closed totalitarian state, moral ambiguities are hard to judge. Perhaps Orff felt survivor guilt and needed to convince himself. A warped way of making amends, but, as Kater says, "psychologically significant".

Orff's other legacy was Schulwerk, the concept idea that music was a fundamental source of expression. One of the most remarkable moments in the film comes when a Schulwerk teacher tells of a first year child in a war zone who came to school deeply withdrawn. Her family had been massacred in the night and the child didn't know what to do, so she went to school. Later, there's a clip of children with learning disabilities using the system as therapy. What the film doesn't do is connect the Schulwerk ethos to the wider issues of Orff's personality. By its very nature the concept eschews wealth, power and status. It's based on the simplest forms of expression, as simple as using the body. "Everyone has a voice within themselves" says another teacher.  "We don't listen to each other, we don't listen to ourselves.... but you cannot make music without listening. Orff teaches us to listen for more than notes, to listen to others and to the world around us in which we all live".

The film doesn't make the connection between what Orff's system teaches and who Orff was as a man, but I think they are inextricable. Godela Orff spoke about her father's childhood fascination with puppets and fantasy. Theatre is a form of expression through which you can explore feelings and ideas without necessarily putting yourself in jeopardy. Orff wasn't personally warm and giving, perhaps because he was quite vulnerable within. Hence the contradictions in his life. Yet he intuited how others could find themselves.  He couldn't deal with reality too well, but he recognized that the process of becoming a whole person was through expression.

Curiously the film hardly deals with Orff''s music at all. It's loosely based around a semi staged performance of Carmina Burana, but the music isn't integrated into the narrative. Yet, since it's the one piece everyone knows, it does need confronting. Listen to its angular rhythmic shapes and the violent surges of sound. These fool many into thinking it's a Nuremburg rally in music. But then listen carefully. The texts depict a medieval world where life was short and barbaric, where pleasure had to be grasped in an almost animalistic way before inevitable death. Strictly speaking not all that different from living in the 20th century. Godela claims that the piece was at first greeted with stunned silence until she cried out, "Listen you bastards!". Maybe she too muddled memory with wish, for young girls don't dare confront Party brass like that. Quite likely that the audience didn't know what to think as these brutal jagged rhythms do have an affinity with "primitive" non-white music. Orff had lived through the Weimar after all. Normally music like this might have been considered degenerate, but the audience was fooled by the fake Germanism. Remember Hartmann and Simplcius Simplicissimus.

What I really didn't like about the film was that it started with an ad and ended with an ad. Brand names prominently emphasized. We know the music is used in ads, but this is so blatant that it turns the film into a commercial. Orff was morally compromised because he took the easy way with the Reich. Is the film morally compromised since it has no qualms about commercial exploitation? Pretty tacky.  I'm sorry but this ruined the integrity of the film for me. Orff, for all his faults, wasn't crass.

Franz Schreker Songs Holzmair Haselböck

Franz Schreker was "a master of interior states" writes Christopher Hailey, Schreker's biographer.  "The protagonists of his operas are driven by emotional psychology rather than by external events, ideas or philosophical concepts". Not Wagner or Mahler then. Nor quite the world of Ewartung or Wozzeck.  Schreker's songs are interesting, approached on their own terms, like snapshots of experience, contained within the limits of piano song.

Only 33 of Schreker's 49 songs were published in his lifetime, the remainder only in 2005. This CD Songs of Franz Schreker (Bridge 9259) is the most extensive recording,. Wolfgang Holzmair, Hermine Haselböck and Russel Ryan are excellent. One could hardly hope for better performances. Holzmair specializes in less well known Austrian repertoire, so his interpretation evolves from long familiarity with the period. His voice is clear, clean and assertive, yet with a soft Austrian burr that adds a warm glow. Haselböck has an equally elegant style, which suits these songs well. One, Im Garten unter der Linde dates from 1896, when Schreker was only 17.

Much more attractive is Das hungernde Kind, from 1898. It's the same text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn that Mahler used in Das iridische Leben five years previously. Schreker's setting is briskly foursquare. No angst here, no psychological insight whatsoever. The tempo quickens slightly as the child gets more frantic, while the mother's music smiles, enigmatically. One shouldn't sympathise with child abuse, but the song's so charming, Yet what can it mean?

From this period also come two Mutterlieder songs to poems by Mai Holm, which Schreker revised extensively and published as his op 5. They're here in context with other, unconnected songs about the death of children  Like post mortem photographs, songs about the death of children were popular in the 19th century when child mortality was high. Although Schreker's sister had died some years before, it's probably not a good idea to read anything too personal into these songs of lyrical, stylized grief. If anything, the imagery fits best with the songs of flowers, a symbol of beauty that fades too fast. Rosengruss is attrractively ornamented, but for me the most touching is Rosentod to a poem by Dora Leen (Dora Pollack) who was for a while engaged to Schreker and who died in a concentration camp in the 1940's. There are three other songs to her poems, Spuk, Traum and Sommerrfaden, all set with a delicate touch so the naive simplicity of the poems isn't compromised. 

More sophisticated, and more musically satisfying are the later songs, such as four of the five settings of poems by Edith  Ronsperger (1880-1921), written in 1909, included to give a broader perspective. One of the best known is  Der Dunkleheit sinkt schwer wei Blie (Darkness falls as heavy as lead). Hailey draws the parallels with Schoenberg, in particularly Ewartung, though it's a much less complex piece and lasts only 3 minutes. But Schreker blends oppressive dark chords with menacing intervals.  It's highly dramatic, even though it doesn't develop into something more. This is Schreker, opera composer, showing what he can do with song.

It's also the spirit of Expressionism. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari  (click link for full download)! The current fashion for downgrading modernism would have it that Schreker was retrogressive and backward-looking.  Just as the Nazis suppressed composers like Schreker, "fans" these days suppress what makes them modern and worthwhile. Schreker knew Schoenberg, for example, and was well aware of society changing around him.  He had no illusions about conservatism or tradition for its own sake.  Think Irrelohe with its premonitions of the collapse of the old order.  So it's good that this worthy recording includes the song Das feurige Männlein from 1915. A troll astride a demonic stallion. It's First World War Feuerreiter, unleashing Armageddon in his trail. Weh! schreien die Menschen, die Bäum' und die Stein' - und das feuerige Männlein lauscht graig hinein.
Please see my other posts on Schreker, more here than other sites.

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.

Eschenbach Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony - why it's tops

Thinking again about Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony, pulled out the Eschenbach recording again and it still gives me goosebumps. It was the first recording to use Anthony Beaumont's revised edition based on the manuscript, as opposed to what was previously published. This alone gives it an edge over the nearest contender, Riccardo Chailly (and Eschenbach's soloists are the best in the business). Because it's the smallish Capriccio and not one of the Big Bucks labels, it doesn't get the marketing it deserves. Anway here's what I wrote about the recording when it came out fresh. If anything, my admiration has deepened with time.

"It's groundbreaking because it's informed by recent discoveries about Zemlinsky and his style. Anthony Beaumont is the most perceptive of Zemlinsky scholars. His research into Zemlinsky's ideas and methods resulted in a complete re-edition of the score, revealing its true, lucid beauty.

In the 1920’s, Tagore was wildly popular in progressive circles because his rejection of materialism ran counter to the values of the time. Remember, India was still a colony. Embracing Tagore's spirituality was a kind of liberation. By using Tagore as the basis of this symphony, Zemlinsky is doing more than adopting pseudo-oriental exoticism. He knew what Tagore represented. He's not looking backward, but forward.

This performance shows with penetrating clarity just how imaginative Zemlinsky’s writing was. No muddy meandering here. Eschenbach and his soloists have thought the whole symphony through. This is an interpretation with vivid insights, gained not only from the score itself, but informed by an understanding of the music of his time.

Thus those rich drum rolls that lead into the symphony announce things to come, as drum rolls should be – quite literally a “curtain raiser” for a cosmic adventure. Immediately, refreshingly clear brass introduce the three note figure that recurs in myriad guises through the whole symphony. Then, softly, out of the orchestra, the baritones voice enters, quietly but with intense depth and feeling. “Ich bin friedlos” (a variant of the three note figure). Goerne is just over forty, still not at the peak of his powers, and yet it’s hard to imagine any singer delivering such authority and nuance to these words. The way he curls his voice around the vowels is utterly delicious – Meine Seele schweift in Sensucht, den Saum der dunkeln Weite zu berühten. You don’t need a word of German to enjoy the richness of his tone.

Berühten, becalmed. Yet this music is anything but listless. It reflects the overwhelming “thirst” in the text for distant, unknown horizons and the “Great Beyond”. Goerne sings Ich bin voll Verlangen with eagerness, then shapes the next words “und wachsam” with warm, rounded, sensuality. It’s delicious to hear two different, but valid feelings, in the space of a few seconds. Make no mistake, this music is about seeking, striving for something yet unknown, which grows from a pool of stillness.

A lovely skittish violin solo introduces the second movement. Schäfer’s voice with its pure, light quality expresses youth better than most of the sopranos who’ve sung this part. She may sound almost breathless with excitement, but she’s far too assured a singer to lose the musical line, Mutter, der junge…. the vowels underline each other., opening out. For the first time we hear an almost Bergian leap in the voice, when Zemlinsky decorates the line Zieg mir, wie soll mein Haar… Both the image and the sudden leap will recur later in the symphony. For the moment, Schäfer colours it with warmth, as though blossoming into womanhood before our ears. The music illustrating the exotic procession is one of the rare overtly “oriental” touches Zemlinsky indulges in. In the tumultuous postlude, the full orchestra surges forth, complete with drums and cymbals, yet the echoes of the three note theme gradually assert themselves as the soprano song blends seamlessly into the next baritone entry. There’s no narrative, we never discover how the girl and prince meet, if they do at all. The erotic tension and waves of sound owe much to Wagner, but also to Berg and Schoenberg. Goerne’s singing in the third movement is some of the most beautiful in the whole symphony. It is quite breathtakingly sensitive and nuanced. Du bist mein Eigen, mein Eigen, he repeats, each time with intense, but nuanced feeling. These notes, too, are repeated throughout the symphony.

The fourth movement, expands the symphony into new territory. Again, an exquisite violin solo sets the mood, which deepens with cellos and violas. Schäfer’s voice cleanly rings out Spricht’s du mir Speak to me! The line here is tender, yet also discordant, with frequent sudden leaps in pitch which are decidedly modern. So, too, is the indeterminate tonality, creating at once lushness and unreality. The music seems to hover as if it were the stuff of dreams and unconscious. It’s atmospheric, pure chromatic impressionism. There are murmurs of Spricht’s du mir, and again the painfully beautiful violin, and sinister, dark woodwind. This song is sensual, but it’s no excuse for sentimental indulgence, and the orchestra plays with well judged reticence. . It is, after all, a movement about the silence of intimacy. Nur die Bäume werden im Dunkel flüstern (only the trees will whisper in the dark),

The fanfare with which the fifth movement starts seems to drive away the strange mood that had prevailed before. It may seem relatively conventional music but this is emotionally amorphous territory. When the sixth movement starts, there’s no mistaking the modernism here. Horn and bass clarinet inject a darker, discordant mood. Schäfer’s extensive experience in new music means she copes effortlessly with those sudden tonal swoops while still keeping sensual beauty. She makes “mein gierigen Hände” sound genuinely eager. This is Ewartung, minus the harsh dementia, and all the more complex for that. The mood is rocked by rhythmic melody, as the singer becomes aware Träume lassen sich nicht eingefangen (dreams can’t be made captive). Only then does the voice rise in horror, punctuated by a single, fatal drumstroke. Has it all been an illusion ? It’s not clear, nor on what level, but that’s what makes it so intruiging. Zemlinsky wisely leaves the ideas floating. Instead, he lets the music segue, mysteriously, into the final movement.

This final song is full of interpretative possibilities. The protagonist accepts that the affair is at an end, yet is dignified and positive. Lass es nicht eine Tod sein, sondern Vollendung (let it not be a death, but completeness). Even love is sublimated in creative rebirth. Lass Liebe in Erinn’rung schmelzen und Schmerz in lieder. Let love ache and melt in memory, in song. The dignified calm with which Goerne sings confirms that the protagonist has reached that “Great Beyond” he sang of in the first movement and has found the horizons he sought.. This time, the violin returns, playing a sweet, plaintive melody. while the orchestra echoes the word Vollendung, Vollendung. Then there’s another transition. A warmer note, like a breeze, enters on the strings, and the wavering halftones resolve from minor, gradually, to major. With infinite depth , Goerne sings that last phrase Ich halte meine Lampe in die Höhe, um dir auf deinen Weg zu leuchten. I hold my lamp up high to light your way. .Lovers must part, for life has a higher purpose. “zu leuchten” is sung with such goodwill, that you feel that whoever embarks on the next phase will be going armed with knowledge and faith gained by those who care enough to light them on their way. The postlude is led by a distant woodwind, a reference to the flute that called in the very beginning of this journey. There are echoes, too, of the Du bist mein Eigen theme, emphasizing the sense of fulfilment. Gradually the wavering half tones resolve, and the music moves from minor to major, concluding in another shimmering plane of colour. .

Anthony Beaumont, in his analysis of the symphony, said “often the singers are engulfed in a dark forest of orchestral filigree work. In performance, the score requires Mozartian grace and precision. For all its abandon, this music reveals its true beauty and power only if performed with discipline and cool headed restraint”. Eschenbach recognizes its profoundly spiritual qualities, keeping the textures clear, letting them shimmer through unsullied. It’s the very purity of the orchestral playing that sheds light on the dynamics of the scoring. The soloists voices complement each other perfectly, and are in turn complemented by the elegance of the orchestral sound."

Lots more on the Lyric tymphony, Zemlinsky, Etc on this site, please explore.

Die beiden Grenardiere

Another in my sort-of series of soldier songs. Richard Tauber sings Schumann's Die beiden Grenadiere op 49/1. This appeals to me because Tauber's voice doesn't necessarily evoke big butch Grenadiers, but it's lovely here, especially in the final strophes where he lets rip with the Marsellaise reference. Two soldiers from Napoleon's army walk back towards France after the defeat in Russia. They're desolate. Wie brennt meine alte Wunde!, one of them cries. The other's more sanguine, he wants to get back to his wife and kids. The first one's inspired "What do wife and children matter. Let them go beg! Mein Kaiser, mein Kaiser gefangen!  A different perspective. He knows he's dying but wants his corpse to be carried back to France and buried with military honours.

Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl über mein Grab,
Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen;
Dann steig ich gewaffnet hervor aus dem Grab -
Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schützen!

Loyalty beyond death and reason, but at least he has a dream. Because the poem's Heine, expect a degree of irony,which Schumann picks up on, with jaunty introduction and rousing finale. Below is Ernst Busch's take on the Soviet Song The Sacred War. When we moan about winter, think how else it could be.

Schreker Irrelohe - the flames of madness

Famously, the name Irrelohe came to Franz Schreker when he heard a train station master call out the name of a tiny hamlet. The name's mellifluous, the meaning is not. "The flames of madness" The plot's  straight out of a horror movie.

Dramatic overture, pulsating cadences like some somnolent monster. Wind instruments whip upwards - a hint of flames and smoke. The word "Irrelohe" repeats throughout. Irrelohe castle stands menacingly above the village. Long ago an Irrelohe ancestor had a relationship with an immortal spirit. All Irrelohe men since are cursed. They'll suddenly go insane, attack a virgin and die.

A peasant called Peter is in love with a beauty called Eva. Idyllic, except that Peter's mother is deranged by some trauma  in her past. Amazingly, Peter doesn't know the local legend or who his father might be, until sinister stranger Christobald arrives who seems to know many secrets. On Count Irrelohe's wedding day, 30 years ago, the village was making merry. Suddenly flames leapt out of Graf Irrelohe's head, his eyes bulged and he ravished a red (flame) haired village maid violently in front of the whole community. Then Christobald  reveals that he was due to marry the girl who was raped. No-one of course did a thing.  Class warfare, disguised as medieval romance. Graf Irrelohe went on to have other children but died insane. Christobald left the village and became a wandering minstrel. Ein Spielmann - follow the link for more. Schreker's connecting to a long German tradition  but deals with the violent sex without shirking. No euphemisms,, no romantic gloss. In 1922-4 when the opera was written, ideas of sexual aberration were being confronted for the first time. Schreker links a traditional German icon to depraved psychosis. It was shocking. No wonder Schreker gained a reputation for being "unhealhy". His relative obscurity after his death is blamed on the Nazis but in fact there's a lot more behind it.


Musically Irrelohe is disturbing because Schreker combines rhythms of traditional German drinking songs and dances with discordant dissonace. It's not specially modern but makes deliberate references to Wagner - Loge's flames, Irrelohe's flames, (hear the link "lo"  in the music)  Wotan protects his daughter from sex, while other women are destroyed by curses and power structures. Cosima would have hated Irrelohe whatever Schreker's ancestry might have been. Richard Wagner, I suspect would have loved it (though there's no competition between Wagner and Schreker in musical terms).

Demonism, too. The parson, the miller and Eva's father, the forester, meet at the crossroads. There's the usual icon of a crucifix, like you see all over Germany and Austria.  They're there for the pious to stop and rest, but also because in mythology, crossroads are vulnerable places where the Devil can enter. This cosy village Trinity leaves, replaced by a much more malevolent trinity. Ratzekahl, Strahlbusch and Fünkchen are Spielmännern too, musicians who turn up out of nowhere. Ostensibly they play at village parties - where drink is served and inhibitions lower -  but they're also faintly dangerous. Christobald's their leader. Gott, Mensch und Tier, sie sündigen alles, Nur durch Feuer kann Friede werden (God, man and beast, all sinners. Only through Fire can peace be reached.)

Think back to Der Feuerreiter, Eduard Mörike's poem inspired by ancient folk legend. He's an elemental who suddenly appears destroying the village economy in a holocaust of flame. The devil, maybe, but also a creature of nature. Just as the Feuerreiter appears first as a glimpse of a red cap, someone's spied  ein greisgrau Männlein mit einer Spitz, roten Feder am Hut (an ash headed dwarf with a pointy hat topped with a red feather)  Something's in the wind, says the forester, lots more fires than usual this year.

Meanwhile Eva has met Graf Heinrich, the current Lord of Irrelohe. He's seized with an irrational passion for her, but the madness hasn't taken over yet. In fact, Eva lusts for him desperately, she'd hardly resist. They decide to marry then and there. What a coincidence that Christobald and his Spielmännern have suddenly materialized.

However it's not Graf Heinrich who jumps a virgin, but Peter, crazed by his unrequited love for Eva.  Tie me up, he begs his mother, or I'll do something bad. Like turn into a werewolf, or the first born son of the last Lord Irrelohe. Heinrich is the second son, the Count raped Lola on his wedding day 30 years before. Now Heinrich must duel with Peter who is the living image of their father. Freudian minefield. The text ending's trite. Eva and Heinrich welcome the flames that destroy the castle (and presumably his mother, servants and fortune). Yet the idea is liberating, getting rid of the baggage of the past. Schreker's music has the last word. It swells up majestically, crackling with infernal energy. Götterdämmerung in a quaint rustic context. Schreker's not as good as Wagner, but wow, this is dramatic, and sinister. Eva and Heinrich think the fire is purifying because it ends their curse. In Irrelohe, the curse was caused by sex, but Die Spielmännern live on to wreak havoc elsewhere. There'll be other fires to come, and worse.

Schreker is currently fashionable because Bard discovered the comparatively twee Der ferne Klang. which is heard in full production in major European houses like Zurich. That opera contains fallen women and haunted men, but Irrelohe takes obsession to extremes. Musically it's altogether stronger and more pointed. The Spielmännern are like demons, emerging from the unconscious, destroying order and reason. After the social upheavals of the 1920's it must have been hard to take. Last month there was a production of Irrelohe in Bonn, at least the third since the Schreker revival thitrty years ago. Unfortunately, there's only one recording, a fairly basic live performance recorded in 1989,  unexceptional singers and the Wiener Symphoniker, who are not the Wiener Philharmoniker. But imagine Irrelohe performed by players who think beyond the idea that Schreker's no more than late, late Romantic. Ingo Metzmacher, we need you.

Thanks to a reader who knows this opera well,, here is a link to the current Bonn production which is apparently "outstanding". Complete with video. Review above. The production continues to Feb 2011. Look at what else is on in Bonn ! Puts Bard into perspective.

A Dog's Heart - the movie

Brand-new opera A Dog's Heart starts at the ENO on 20th. Please see my preview HERE. The opera is based on a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written only 8 years after the Russian Revolution. It was a time of surprising liberality because the new order didn't, as yet, clamp down on new ideas in society, literature, film, etc. Nonetheless Bulgakov's The Heart of A Dog was so seditious it went underground until officially unbanned in 1987. Perhaps it says something about the Soviet Union that the novel was filmed the very next year for Lenfilms, Moscow, directed by Vladimir Bortko.

Atmospherically shot in sepia, like an antique print, it grounds the drama in 1925, discreetly bypassing the universal relevance. It's a good starting point though, because so much of the film depends on understanding the background. A snow-covered street, shot from ground level. Gradually voice emerges - the thoughts of the dog, which is why the shots are dog-level. Everyone's scavenging in these desperate times, "dog eat dog" you could quip.

Professor Preobrazhensky is an eminent surgeon, who lives in an old Tsarist mansion, now gradually being taken over by squatters authorized  by the new authorities. They pull up the parquet for firewood, the electricity's unreliable, everything's slowly falling apart. The Professor dines in elegant surroundings and still has the clout to ward off Shvonder and his Management Committee who represent the new order. The Professor adopts the dog and feeds him kielbasa. The Professor's speciality is interspecies transplant which was actually popular pseudoscience in the 1920's - monkey glands as viagra for example. Rejuvenation by extreme measures - a metaphor for the grand Soviet Experiment. 

But you can't take the dog out of the man. Post-surgery Sharik gets poshed up as Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov. The name means "polygraph" a nonsense name chosen by a dog asserting his identity. He wrecks the house, tries to rape the maid, generally runs amok till he takes up with Shvonder and his gang of bullies. Then he gets a job in pest control. "You're so good at rounding up stray cats", say his mates. "It's in my heart", says Sharikov. Now that Sharokov has power and is armed with a gun, he's dangerous.  Not because he is pals with Shvonder. "The real horror is that he now has a man's heart, not a dog's,", says the Professor, "the rottenest heart in all creation".

Bortko's Heart of a Dog is full of quirky period details that will have Russians howling with delight. But it's a wonderful film anyone with wit can enjoy if you like subversive satire. The actor who plays the dog even looks jowly, like a mutt. At the ENO, A Dog's Heart is an entirely new work, scored by Alexander Raskatov and dramatized by Simon McBurney, both of them new to opera, though McBurney's work with Complicite, the innovative theatre ensemble, is legendary. The film is excellent background, but go to the Coliseum expecting something completely different to the film. Who knows what this latest transformation  might be?