Frankenstein live in Manchester

BBC Radio 3 is recording a performace of HK Gruber's Frankenstein!!  on 22 Oct at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. This is music that needs to be experienced live for maximum impact. Get tickets here. Fabulous, crazy programme, Poulenc's Les Biches and Gottfried von Einems' Episodes from Turandot which are nothing like Puccini.  

Frankenstein!!  is an event, a piece of theatre as much as of music. One day Gruber will be too old to create the spectacle afresh, so this will be a special occasion. It's different every time, for Gruber doesn't do jaded, though he's been performing this for 30 years.

The Frankenstein story epitomises the morbid “gothic” seam of Romanticism. Horror movies celebrate it and parody it at the same time. Gruber’s Frankenstein!! parodies the entire genre and throws in Robinson Crusoe, Goldfinger and John Wayne for good measure. Images flash past so quickly they barely register, but that’s part of the effect, which Gruber calls pan-demonium, at once referring to the anarchy of Pan worship and demonology. There are snatches of oompah band and of lullaby, an elegant horn solo that wouldn’t be out of place in a “proper” symphony, and, in true Gruber style, lots of toy instruments and whirring noise tubes. He conducts, sings and plays at the same time, of course. Frantic energy is part of the package. It wouldn’t be quite so manic without tiny, tinny saxophone or good old fashioned alto Melodica (bright red, of course). This performance was in English, which made it even more surreal. He murders syntax and distorts lines still further. Howls and screams seem quite mundane. He affected an extremely heavy accent, exaggerating the kitsch Mitteleuropean ambience so typical of Frankenstein movies. Think Bela Lugosi on speed, performed by Brahms, whom Gruber vaguely resembles.

This madcap romp through images is hilarious, but there’s disciplined method behind it. Rhythms and counter-rhythms cross and converge. As with the horn solo, there is nice intricate scoring for percussion. Random as the images may seem, cumulatively they have an effect. Lurking behind the humour there’s something dark. “Frankenstein is dancing…with the test tube lady…my daughter dear, it’s you!” Batman and Robin in bed together….well, Batman‘s “ill bred”. Crusoe visits a new island where cannibals live…..And a little girl visits a doctor to fix her doll Caspar. “Good medicine is practised here, with minor aberrations.”. So Caspar gets the brain of a criminal. ..”Thank you, thank you” croons Gruber in falsetto. “Now my Caspar can walk again...and chase pretty, little girls”.

Lucky Mancunians!

HK Gruber hits Manchester

Manchester is in for lively times with HK Gruber as composer/conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, one of the BBC orchestras family. Hopefully that means we hear more of him and his zany ways. Håkan Hardenberger is premiering Gruber's latest work, Busking, on 27th February. Boosey & Hawkes describes it as a "jazzy work for concertante trumpet, accordion and banjo with string orchestra. The solo line-up draws parallels with Picasso’s painting Three Musicians, depicting bohemian music-making with carnivalesque overtones. In musical terms Gruber’s soloists function as modern equivalents of a baroque trumpet coupled with organ or harpsichord continuo, perhaps as heard on the streets of New Orleans."

You couldn’t invent someone like HK Gruber. Nothing, I suspect, pleases him more than discomforting the pretentious, even when he himself becomes pretentious. Which he can be when he's on a roll. Sometimes, he's full of it. I remember his South Bank retrospective in the early 80's, which he called the Second Second Viennese School. Schoenberg have no fears.

But Gruber shakes up complacency. I love the motto “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. It could certainly be Gruber’s, too, because under the mayhem there’s purpose. He revives a Viennese and German tradition that used anarchic satire to make serious comments on society. Which is why he's a chansonnier and cabaret artiste (note the last divaesque "e"). His Frankenstein! is amazing - he did it at the Proms in 2006 and it's available on CD. He's less impressive conducting other people's work, but his own music is varied enough that there's probably something for everyone.

Bostridge trades fey for Kray - Dreigroschenoper

Ian Bostridge traded his fey haircut for a slicked-back Kray brothers look, complete with wrap-around dark glasses in this Dreigroschenoper at the Barbican 13.6.09. Bostridge’s lean frame was just right for Macheath, the sleazeball who always manages to slip away uncaught. MacHeath oozes, like slime, his lines replicated in saxophone and slide trombone. So Bostridge’s lounge lizard characterization was very apt, menace concealed by an air of impenetrable elusiveness. Mackie gets away because he conceals himself, like so much implicit in this opera.
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera or 3d Opera) was first performed as part of the agit prop cabaret world of Brecht and Weill’s Berlin. The 1931 recording and subsequent film (rather too naturalistic) has defined its performance history. It made Lotte Lenya the iconic Weill personality. Dozens of singers have colonised the image since then, as if Lenya’s rough voice was a licence for bad singing. Certainly Brecht and Weill used actors rather than singers in those early years, because they were poor and their politics meant they wanted to reach audiences in clubs, not opera houses. It’s a “Beggar’s Opera” after all. But therein lies the contradiction that makes the piece so interesting. It masquerades as cabaret theatre, but it’s actually quite sophisticated musically. Just as Brecht turns the 18^th century John Gay play on its head, Brecht turns musical genres upside down. The rousing Finale is a Bach Chorale in disguise. This performance was conducted by HK Gruber who also sang Peachum, “the poorest man in the world” who is also The King of the Beggars (another contradiction). Gruber can do sardonic irony better than anyone else, so his approach to 3dO is in a whole other league from the usual straightforward “entertainment” mode. Beneath the cute tunes, Brecht’s message is savage: all the world’s a stage and a mad one at that. So Gruber ropes in Klangforum Wien as his “orchestra”. They are one of the best contemporary music ensembles around and can do “difficult” anytime. Here they are playing banjos, guitars, saxophones and rinky tink piano. And Vienna's Chorus sine nomine, who can do perfect pitch enough to sing with tuning forks, get to do “backing vocals”. Proof of this musically astute approach are the soloists. Luxury casting this: Angelika Kirschlager sings a brilliantly saucy Jenny, slinking like a snake, a perfect partner to Bostridge’s louche Mackie. Dorothea Röschmann’s usual sweetness is here laced with poison – she can act as well as sing. In this performance Polly sings Seeraüber Jenny, not Jenny herself. This works well, because it adds another level of musical cross-dressing More good performances from Florian Boesch as Tiger Brown the dodgy cop and Cora Burggraaf as his daughter, Hanna Schwarz as Mrs Peachum, a coloratura foil to Gruber’s burlesque Peachum. His lines are half speech, half ham, so having a proper singer as his wife is a telling contrast. There’s plenty of proof as to the value of proper voices in Weill. Lotte Lenya was the Tracey Emin of her time, and a sledgehammer persona was probably needed to bring Weill success on Broadway. If the public persona of Brecht and Weill was a caricature, their real message could be packaged in a less overtly political way. In the former East Germany, socialism wasn’t scary, so there was nothing to prove or defend. Thus the DDR Weill performance tradition diverged from the Lenya model. Weill and Eisler were performed by “real” singers like Gisela May and, of all people, Peter Schreier, consummate Mozartean, Bachophile and Liedermeister. These are the recordings to seek out. You can actually hear the words, enunciated with the same precision as there is in the writing. Because Lenya dominated the western market, we’re been persuaded that hers is the only way to do Brecht, and we’re rewarded by pop stars and amateurs who are fun, but not necessarily best placed to reveal the real Weill. Further proof still: here is a clip of a singer doing Seeräuber Jenny in 1931, in French, and almost exactly at the same time as Pabst was filming 3dO in Germany with Lenya, who significantly sings one song only. Margo Lion worked in cabaret but she could actually sing. Lenya scores though for shock value quirkiness.

And even more proof. The ensemble work is extremely tightly written, and takes dexterity to carry over with panache. Especially good was the Kanonen-song, where Bostridge and Boesch bounce off each other with military precision. Here’s a clip of Ernst Busch (as Mack) and Kurt Gerron as Tiger Brown (in military gear). Wonderful – Busch’s sharpness and quick wits serve him well. He’s almost unrecognizable in smooth suit and bowler hat, but that’s the man who spent the war in Nazi KZ’s.

Rise and Fall of Mahagonny Brecht Weill

The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny opened the Ediburgh Festival this year, conducted by my hero, the inimitable HK Gruber. It's being broadcast by BBC Radio 3, so log on and listen.

Weill’s contribution to the Brecht/Weill partnership is often underestimated, and Weill is more inventive musically than he’s often given credit for. Here are witty set pieces, mock-ups of operatic aria, fake hymns, quasi-pompous marches and bar-room piano rolls, complete with swooping glissandi. Deliberately off-key, of course. Weill uses catchy tunes, so people hum along, hardly realizing they are singing something subversive. And thus Mahagonny insinuates itself into dance band music and pop song, so when people do hear the full Mahagonny, it's eerily familiar. Sentimental tunes for a decidedly unsentimental opera !

HK Gruber is perhaps the perfect conductor ! All his life he's specialized in uproariously manic satire and in the agitprop of the 1930's in particular. If you listen to nothing else of his, grab his recording Roaring Eisler or the recent release of his own FRANKENSTEIN!!!! which I might write about later as there is nothing in this world quite like it. And Gruber is the great grandson of the guy who wrote Silent Night, Holy Night. He really understands the malevolence of Brecht and Weill. He gets punchy playing from the Royal Scottish Orchestra who probably still don't know what hit them ! But perhaps a less staid orchestra might have raised more sparks. Vocally, too, most of this was a bit polite.

Get the DVD of the LA Opera production for more distinctive singing and superlative acting by Patti LuPone and Audra Macdonald. Mahagonny and Los Angeles have a lot in common, which is uncomfortable and this could have been disturbing but what do you expect ? I can imagine the ghosts of Brecht and Weill snorting sardonically at the LA crowd spending big bucks on an anti-capitalist tirade. "There's nothing but today!" sings Jimmy as he's about to die. It's the good guys in Benares who get wiped while Mahagonny is saved, at least until it self-destructs.

Please see the other posts on Brecht, Weill, Eisler and Ernst Busch - click lables. This is my fach, and Busch my hero.