Vintage Audi - Parsifal, Pape, Kaufmann, Stemme

From the Bayerisches Staatsoper Munich, Wagner Parsifal with a dream cast - René Pape, Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme, Christian Gerhaher and Wolfgang Koch, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, directed by Pierre Audi.  The production is vintage Audi - stylized, austere, but solidly thought-through. Audi, veteran of decades on the cutting edge of music theatre, knows what he's doing, even if what he does isn't flashy. So darkness and desolation greeted us on the stage. The Grail community is in trouble, desiccated like the skeleton in the corner beneath which Kundry shelters, a wild, lonely outcast.  Audi's focus on the main characters focuses attention on what they are singing about. Just as in Greek tragedy, there's little need for fancy decoration. In an opera like Parsifal austere is no bad thing, and abstraction will suffice.  This also means more room for the music itself which is hardly a minor distraction. In many ways it is the whole point of the drama, greater than the stars or scenery.  Without the music there'd be no opera !

René Pape is cloaked in black, Amfortas (Christian Gehaher) in white, with Kundry (Nina Stemme) in black/red moiré.  Lest we get caught up, too soon in simplicity, Pape and Stemme remove their "armour". (Lucky for them in this blistering heat)  So when the "Innocent Fool" Parsifal arrives (Jonas Kaufmann),  he's wearing a bizarre breastplate. Minor detail but don't dismiss it yet.  The Grail Knights are in heavy armour. But for what purpose ?  In their fortress they have no enemies to fight but themselves.  The orchestra wells up, magnificently, Parsifal bells booming. Of course Parsifal is impressed. But the children's choir sing of sacrifice. What is this blood ritual that's re-enacted without question ? Amfortas is suffering but the knights look on, but then remove their cloaks to reveal body suits.  Of course they're not "beautiful". It's easy to judge a  production by shocking images but whatb really matters is to figure out why.  Under their armour, they are human, capable of compassion. Though ugly, they are redeemable. Compassion is a greater gift than conventional beauty. As Parsifal wanders off, deep in thought, we should be thinking, too.

The reealm of Klingsor (Wolfgang Koch) is depicted through images of dead bodies, hanging upside down. Again, simple but effective.  The Flower Maidens are seen in fatsuits  Like the dead men, they are Klingsor's victims, creatures of his sick mind, created to trap and deceive. If we judge them on surface appearances we are buying into his game, treating women as objects to be consumed by men.  Besides, listen to their voices - seriously good casting here - Tara Erraught among them.  There is a lot of misogyny in Parsifal, such as the Knight's mistreatnent of Kundry, which needs to be addressed because abuse is the opposite of compassion.   Part of the reason the Grail community is in trouble  is its dismissal of women and the principles they represent.  Kundry, after all, "never lies" as Gurnemanz tells us right out, though the Knights malign her.  Though she's controlled by Klingsor, she's the vehicle through which Parsifal connects to his mother and awakens his conscience.  In this act, Stemme (as Kundry) looks lovely in evening gown and blonde wig, but her lines are forcefully delivered. She's too real to do mock-temptress.  And so the walls of Klingsor's kingdom are rent apart, his victory denied. Kundry reveals how she was cursed : I liked the personality in Stemme's performance.  And thus Parsifal's self-discovery, Kaufmann's voice swelling with magnificent resolution.

"Hier bist du an geweihtem Ort:da zieht man nicht mit Waffen her, geschloss'nen Helmes, Schild und Speer.". Mark those words from Gurnemanz. They explain a lot.  Parsifal creeps back to the Grail Community garbed in strange armour but disrobes, handing the spear - a neat, elegant cross, not a weapon. Instead of violence, bigotry and obsession with outward appearance, redemption comes through kindness.   The steel in Kaufmann's voice gleams, evoking the inner strength Parsifal has learned from years of wandering and searching.  Pape and Kaufmann can do no wrong in this performance, they pretty much steal the show.  As Parsifal baptises Kundry, the stage lights up : utter simplicity and purity, "Wie dünkt mich doch die Aue heut so schön!". The textures in the orchestra open out, with clarity and ineffable sweetness. Kaufamnn's timbre became infused with tenderness.  .

Meanwhile the Knights are back in their formal black armour intoning their ritual dirge. Like Amfortas, they're still acting out guilt, blood sacrifice and immutable agony.  Christian Gerhaher sings a good enough Amfortas though somewhat one-dimensional.   Amfortas carries baggage, he's ridden with conflicts and should ideally be characterized with more sympathy. This is a pity, since Audi's clean, unfussy staging puts so much emphasis on the part.

Mission accomplished, Kaufmann stands with the chorus, one among equals and prays - not with this hands together but over his eyes.  Durch Mitglied wissend mitglied, empathy, kindness, - don't judge people by surface appearances but by what they might be inside.  Instead, listen ! And above all, the imperative of rising above self for higher purposes.  An excellent ending : the focus shifting from the mortals on stage to an abstract depiction of light, more spiritual than specific.  This reflects Wagner's stage direction "Lichtstrahl: hellstes Erglühen des "Grales".   So we don't see a literal dove flying around, but the meaning is clear. The orchestra has the last word, so to speak : we are in the presence of the sublime.
 

Powerful statement - Rattle Metamorphosen, Das Lied von der Erde

By pairing  Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (Simon O'Neill, Christian Gerhaher) with Strauss Metamorphosen, Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra were making a truly powerful statement. The Barbican performance last night was no ordinary concert. This performance was extraordinary because it carried a message. Metamorphosen deals with annihilation, the symbolic death of civilisation. Das Lied von der Erde confronts annihilation but offers transcendance, through metamorphosis.  Whether Rattle realized or not, the Massacre of Nanking started on this day, 80 years ago, one incident in a century of horrors. Music doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can enhance our sensitivity to what happens around us.

In Metamorphosen, Strauss overturns the cliché that strings are necessarily "romantic". His strings operate together like a chorale, in which the voices are too numb to articulate except through abstract sound.  Hence the haunted sussurations, generating a haze of sound which both suggests and obscures meaning.  The bombing of German opera houses was, to Strauss, symptomatic of a much wider trauma : the scenes of past triumphs literally going up in smoke. Rattle and the LSO strings defined  the textures so well that the effect was almost claustrophobic : moments when the first violin rose above the density shone, illuminating the background.  Rattle also, suggests how "modern" the piece is, with its subtleties and its Night and Fog ambiguity.

Simon O'Neill and Christian Gerhaher were the soloists in Das Lied von der Erde, an interesting combination since their voices are so different, and a choice which also intensified meaning.  In performance, singers interact with each other, and with the orchestra, so a good choice of singers contributes to interpretation.

O'Neill is a Wagner tenor, capable of great force. He's also a singer who inhabits roles, bringing out the psychology of the characters he portrays. Wagner heroes aren't nice, or romantic, so the metallic quality in O'Neill's timbre works particularly well in suggesting inner conflict.  Some of his keynote roles are Siegmund and Tannhäuser, men who have experienced life to the full.  In Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde,  the tenor does not want to die, and struggles against Fate. Defiantly, he raises his Gold'nen Pokale to drink himself insensate. Even when O'Neill sang the word "Das Firmament" he laced it with poisoned irony. The harsh truth is that apes will howl on abandoned graves. In Chinese culture where heritage is sacred, this image is horrific : the Id consuming the Ego, barbarity annihilating civilization. When O'Neill sang the words "wild-gespenstische Gestalt", he spat them out with a savagery that showed how well he understood the context.

In complete contrast, Christian Gerhaher sang with serene smoothness,  which worked well with O'Neill's intensity. DasTrinklied vom Jammer der Erde and Der Abschied form two pillars, between which the protagonist reflects upon his life. The voices don't operate in dialogue, but suggest  different parts of the same persona, as does the mirror image of  the half  moon bridge reflected in the pond.  Gerhaher had been singing for years before he shot to international stardom in Tannhäuser with an astonishingly beautiful O du holdes Abendstern, still his signature role.  Wolfram represents purity, the Wartburg tradition where battles are fought by song. Wolfram's a paragon, Tannhäuser raddled and cursed, but Elisabeth chose the bad boy, who had lived.  Gerhaher is one of the finest Wolframs ever, but O'Neill, is an excellent Tannhäuser.  In so many ways, this Das Lied von der Erde could have been Tannhäuser the Rematch, a level of meaning that's essential to understanding.

Das Lied von der Erde represents a traverse from life to sublimated afterlife. The images in this song symphony are pretty, but doomed.  O'Neill established the right emotional tone, while Gerhaher's serenity acted a foil.  The images in the text are pretty, but pointed.   The young men will no longer prance on their horses as they did when young, the friends in the pavilion will part. Gerhaher's calm smoothness reminded me  of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, who salves troubled souls. Lotus blossoms dignify Kuan Yin in Chinese mythology. The roots grow in darkness and dirt, but the flowers grow towards the sun. The maidens pluck them because they are edible : a source of nutrition in every sense. Eventually the poet/protagonist is silenced, with only a bird (woodwind) as guide (like Siegfried).  Then in Der Abschied  the journey metamorphosed onto another level altogether.  Gerhaher's singing here was exquisite, well modulated and even paced, the last words "ewig...ewig...ewig" expressed with depth and richness.

This Rattle/LSO Das Lied von der Erde was also outstanding because Rattle understood its structural architecture.  The work is remarkably symmetric, dualities creating internal links within and between each section. The singers’ voices are paralleled by flute and oboe. The repeating refrain "Dunkel ist das Leben ist der Tod" connects to the much more esoteric "ewigs" with which the work ends.  Each song ends with an emphatic break, which Rattle clearly marks, for each song closes a door and moves on. In Der Abschied, there are multiple inner sections, interspersed with orchestral interludes which serve to mark transitions. Whatever is happening now is beyond the realm of words alone: like a kind of transition in which something is gradually distilled into a new plane of existence.  Think about the Purgatorio in what would have been Mahler's tenth. A pulse like a heartbeat throbs in the early songs,  which gradually resolves into the calm almost-breathing stillness in the end.  It may be fashionable in some quarters  to knock Rattle on principle because he's successful and famous, but that overlooks the fact that he has very strong musical instincts.  And the LSO plays for him as if divinely inspired.

Christian Gerhaher and András Schiff Vancouver BC

From Barbara Miller, who was at the Chan Center in Vancouver BC:

"I don’t know where to begin to explain how special this recital was. I had admired Christian Gerhaher on recordings and heard András Schiff live in solo recitals, as well as on recordings of marvelous collaborations with great singers. So I didn’t think twice about making the three-hour drive to Vancouver to hear them perform together. The program included Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” and Schumann’s “Dichterliebe”, as well as Schumann’s Opus 98a Harfner songs from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, and a set of songs by Haydn that tended toward the spooky or melancholy: The Spirit’s Song, Content, Trost unglücklicher Liebe, Geistliches Lied, and The Wanderer. Beethoven’s lovely “Adelaide” ended the program, with Schumann’s “Mondnacht” sung as an encore.

The biggest revelation for me in this recital was how effective it is when a very capable singer is thoroughly committed to communicating the words of the songs, concentrating his energy and putting all his vocal technique in the service of the texts. Gerhaher had a very contained stance, and I don’t remember a single hand gesture, although he was never stiff. While he moved his head and upper body, and his face was quite expressive, his hands remained at his sides, or one hand was holding the piano. Rather than create a character who felt the emotions, he so thoroughly inhabited the songs in his own persona that we had to pay attention. Meanwhile, András Schiff, who is one of the great solo pianists of our time, brought his own genius for detail to the accompaniments, authoritatively and unforgettably leaving his mark on his solo passages, while always keeping the sound of the fully opened Steinway D piano underneath the singer when they were together. Gerhaher had a music stand with the texts of the songs, to which he referred occasionally with a quick glance to the side, except during the Haydn songs, when he put the stand in a position where he could look down at it directly in front of him, perhaps wanting to get the English words exactly right.

Looking through the notes I scribbled during or between songs, there is little that is really useful, since I really wanted to watch the performers and listen to the music rather than write coherent comments, so this will be a disappointing review for anyone who wants details of the songs. Gerhaher’s baritone voice was smooth through the registers, showed a good dynamic range, and never suffered flaws in intonation or breath support. He has recorded all these pieces with his usual accompanist, Gerold Huber (the Beethoven and Haydn will be on the recording coming out in June), and I refer anyone who is unfamiliar with him to these recordings (or to the slightly quirky Youtube videos of them performing An die ferne Geliebte in a rehearsal studio) to judge for yourself the nature of Gerhaher’s style.

But, as fine as Huber is as an accompanist, Schiff’s accompaniment was amazingly sublime and complemented Gerhaher’s “plain style” with a refined sense of detail and consummate technique that made for a truly rare and memorable Liederabend. The two artists performed this program in New York and Toronto, as well as Vancouver, and I can only bless my luck, and thank the Vancouver Recital Society, for the fact that one of their performances was close enough that I could attend it. Christian Gerhaher’s bio mentions that “while completing his medical training he perfected his musical training in master classes given by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau” among others. I never heard Fischer-Dieskau live, but, in lamenting the passing of the great singer, I am grateful to experience his legacy: another generation of singers with deep artistic commitment to the Lied, and a cultural climate in which Lied recitals can take place around the world. Rather sadly, the hall was not completely filled for this world-class performance. The Vancouver Recital Society’s Artistic Director Leila Getz made an appeal at the beginning for subscription renewals, saying that, while the concerts are growing ever more wonderful, the audiences are diminishing. (Since most of their programs are instrumental recitals, one assumes that it is more than just art song that is drawing fewer people). I hope that there is still a future for this kind of intimate performance by the world’s great musicians in places other than the music capitals of the world, and I encourage everyone who loves these forms to attend live performances and make donations to the organizations that bring them to us."

Opera and Lieder bridged by Wolf

Lieder and Opera are different worlds, where different values apply. In opera, a singer has to compete with others, with the orchestra, the set and even the plot. In Lieder, singer and pianist have to create whole worlds on their own in the space of a few minutes.

Hugo Wolf's songs are often called "operas in miniature" because each contains so much action they're like condensed sagas. Wolf's piano parts act like commentary, often wry and subversive.

On 19th May, those who'd booked for Netrebko and Hvorotovsky missed out because they cancelled, but Lieder fans were OK at the Wigmore Hall with Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch.

The 46 songs in the collection aren't a cycle, and don't form a narrative. Instead they're like a kaleidoscope of "Italian" life, romanticized through Austro-German imagination. Wolf panicked and got seasick on his only attempt to get to Italy, but these songs burst with colour and energy, each a mini drama in itself. Dissolute monks seduce girls whose mothers trust men in robes, a girl wants an "older man" – aged 14! Sometimes it feels like you're listening in on a moment from a much larger story. Why are the lovers scrapping? How can a man's heart leap clean out of his chest and go looking for his girlfriend?

Plenty of drama then in these songs, so the temptation is to play it up to the hilt with expansive action. Yet, fundamentally these songs are still Lieder where what you hear is only the beginning. It's not enough just to create a character. Lieder is about frames of mind, abstract ideas as well as literal stories.

Christian Gerhaher knows this, singing with clear focus, convincing without help from costumes or narrative. But with Lieder there is always something deeper and invisible. Take the song, Schon strekt' ich aus im Bett. A man jumps out of bed and heads for the streets where he plays his lute. But it's no serenade. Wolf sets the last stanza with a strange, meandering cadence. It sounds like the strumming of the lute, yet also evokes the man's relentless wandering. "Many a girl has been moved by my song" go the words, but his music "is wafted away in the wind". Nicely elusive. Is the man a rake, or do the girls dump him despite his songs?

The soprano, Mojca Erdmann is very young, so she's at the stage where she needs to show what her voice can do technically. Hence the starry diva moments like the flourish at the end of Ich hab' in Penna. Impressive, but not in balance with the song. Sure, the girl in the song is bragging about having lovers in every town, but it's more effective with a touch of subtle humour. The difference between opera and Lieder is that Lieder is close focus, thoughtful and intimate. As the first song went in this recital went, Auch kleine Dinge können uns entzücken (even small things can delight us) . "Think of the rose" it continues, "it's small but smells so sweet".

Tim Ashley said much the same about this concert but less gently. read HERE