Metzmacher Elbphilharmonie K A Hartmann Shostakovich

At the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg,  Ingo Metzmacher conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme that might have seemed innocent when it was planned but nowe is disturbingly prescient: Karl Amadeus Hartmann Symphony no 1 "Versuch eines Requiem" with Shostakovich Symphony no 11 "The year 1905", both completed at the height of the Cold War, but with very different perspectives.

The Elbphilhamonie broadcast this concert internationally, online, a harbinger of good things to come. Hamburg invested heavily in the project, realizing that its potential is far greater than for the city alone. While the Philharmonie Berlin is primarily a home for the Berliner Philharmoniker (though other orchestras use it), the Elbphilharmonie could be a game changer, affecting the whole demographic of the business.

This concert also showcased the hall's superb acoustic (read more here).  Anton Webern's Sechs Stücke für grosses Orchester op. 6 (1909) opened the concert. A large orchestra is needed, not for volume, but for extended palette.  Webern sought to express "Klangfarbenmelodie": myriad details of colour and tonality.  Hence the markings "sehr langsam", and "sehr mäßig", unhurried traverses that let the music unfold, revealing subtle shading.  Metzmacher's tempi were by no means slow, but meticulously well judged.  I hardly dared breathe lest the spell be broken. Exquisite playing: a single chord on  harp, muffled drumstrokes, a triplet on bassoon, all perfectly in place and in cohesion. The Viennese are taken for granted in standard repertoire, but here they were revealed as infinitely better musicians than popular cliché might suggest.  On the wide platform of the Elbphilharmonie, there's a lot of space between players, so they're not constrained by being cramped together. They can probably listen to each other for one thing. Sound moves ambiently with this extra "breathing space", quite a distinctive feature of this new auditorium. 

Gerhild Romberger photo Rosa Frank, Vienna Philharmonic

Ingo Metzmacher is the conductor of choice when it comes to K A Hartmann. He's recorded the complete symphonies and with such insight that it's essential listening for anyone interested, not just in Hartmann but also in his period.  Hartmann began this piece in 1936 as a response to the increasing madness of the Third Reich. The first movement is a miserere based on the poem I Sit and Look Out by Walt Whitman. "I sit and look out. upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame"  – men and women suffering, domestically and in war, and tyranny, a famine at sea where sailors cast lots as to who should be killed and eaten that the others might live a little longer.  Yet perhaps the true horror is that the poet can observe but not act. " I sitting, look out upon,/ See, hear, and am silent."  The soloist was Gerhild Romberger, whose powerful, dark timbre articulated suppressed anguish. She's one of the most interesting in her Fach, since she also conveys tenderness and sympathy.  In 2014 I heard her sing O Mensch in Mahler's Symphony no 3 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra,  truly plaintive, as if she were weeping for the death of the old world and giving birth to the new. Hartmann doesn't set every word in the poem, but his orchestration leaves us in no doubt what's happening. An explosive introduction, a fusillade of trumpets, trombone and percussion: horrors intruding on the isolation of the solo voice.

The second movement "Frühling" references Whitman's When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, mourning the assassination of Lincoln and the American Civil War, but the text is oblique, using the image of a falling star to express the idea of loss.  Hartmann's setting is even less wordy, avoiding Whitman's syntax, which is even trickier in German.  Despite the barrage of sound in the introduction and background, what stands out is the passage where the piano plays quietly, its fragile memory evolving into "starlight" in the strings and winds, the wavering line then taken up by soprano trumpets.  Violin and cello dialogue in the opening theme of the third movement, the piano mediating between them. Gradually, other sections in the orchestra join in – oboes, bassoons and tuba and the strings in succession. The tam tam crashes : reminding us that this relative harmony cannot last.

"Tränen " sings Romberger three times, reflecting the first line of Whitman's Tears.  "O, Wer ist dieser Geist?" she cries, and an apparition materializes in the orchestra, brass blaring, strings screaming, timpani crashing. Romberger's lines growling at the bottom of her register, rise suddenly to the top: she isn't fazed, but totally in control. Again, a quiet passage on piano introduces an unearthly mood. "O, Schatten!" sings Romberger with tenderness.  The shade seems stilled in the light of day.  Metzmacher shapes the long orchestral lines so they pulsate with ominous menace,  gathering strength to strike again.  The night falls. Romberger sings "Tränen", as if falling into hypnosis.  Muted bassoons  then screaming chords of alarm.

Muffled snare drums introduce the Epilogue, a prayer "Bitte", and a return to the apocalyptic traumas of the first movement.  Here the text comes from Whitman's Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, where Mother Earth looks upon corpses in the battlefield. No Valkyries, no Valhalla.  The vocal line is intoned, not lyrical, Sprechstimme, not song.  Then, suddenly, Romberger unleashes her full mezzo power. in a long wail of protest.  Her line becomes incantational again.  "O meiner Toten" she sings. Relentless, repeating figures in the orchestra, then a cataclysmic explosion, the echoes of which carry on into silence. I've written about Hartmann many times – search this site – because in so many ways he's more than "just" a composer but a prophet who intuited the trauma of existence and realized that music is can express human decency even in the presence of evil.  His Symphony no 1 (completed in 1955 towards the end of a long career) bears the subtitle "Versuch eines Requiem", towards a Requiem because the horrors aren't over, and may yet get worse than we can possibly imagine.  No time yet for the resolution of a requiem.  Much respect to Metzmacher, who knows Hartmann's music so well and why it is vitally important. Congratulations too, to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elbphilhamonie for having the courage to do this piece when feel-good superficiality might be more popular.

Hartmann's Symphony no 1 and Shostakovich's Symphony no 11 were completed at about the same time in the mid 1950's, but the two pieces are radically different.  While Shostakovich had to be careful not to annoy the Soviets, he was a public figure, unlike the far more uncompromising Galina Ustvolskaya, who had to play along with the regime to survive. His Symphony no 11 is a public piece, which won him  the Lenin Prize and great popularity.  The subject matter is unashamedly patriotic, commemorating the year 1905 and the December Revolution which was suppressed but entered the political mythology of that Soviet State. There's nothing in principle wrong with propaganda music, but much of the appeal of this symphony lies in the way it plays on emotions to whip up excitement,  and the avoidance of doubt.  Metzmacher and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gave a suitably magnificent account, so vivid and full of drama that you could forget that, at heart, this is cinema music as opposed to, say, reflective art.   Is it a soundtrack to an invisible movie? Perhaps we're supposed to suspend judgement and thrill to the images of violence and turbulence.  But where do such feelings lead? After hearing Hartmann, it's not so easy to blank things out. 

Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimus Independent Opera

K A Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimuss with Independent Opera at the Lilian Baylis Studio this week, with Stephanie Corley, Timothy Redmond conducting the Britten Sinfonia. This was the first ever staging in the UK, and for a good reason. Simplicius isn't really an opera at all and much of its pungency derives from the fact that it's written with some Bavarian dialect.  Hartmann's source was H J Chr. Grimmelhausen,  whose book Der Abenteuerliche Simplicismuss (1669), is set in  the Thirty Years War, one of the defining traumas of German history, and indeed world history, since it was the first truly global war, acted out in South America and Asia as well as in Europe. "Anno Domini 1618 wohnten 12 millionen in Deutschland" quotes Hartmann in his introduction. "Da kam der grosse Kreig". Thirty years later, only 4 million remained.  In  Hitler's Proclamation to the German  People, he invoked twelve years of humiliation and two million dead to justify Nazi control. The myth of "The People" legitimized the Third Reich.  By reverting to  Bavarian dialect, Hartmann pointedly underlined that there was no single "German People", and that, in any case, the German past was bathed in blood.

Until now, there has been no English translation but this is no demerit. If non-Bavarians have to struggle with the text, that's a good thing since it makes a difference to enter into the arcane, folksy internal logic of the piece. It is not "our" world but a lost world we need to make an effort to penetrate. Though it portrays the past, Hartmann's Simplicius is in no way naturalistic. The "roles" as such operate as symbols. The narrative lies disguised in the music.  Its disjointed character and embedded references reflect a fractured society falling in upon itself. There are hints of Catholic chant, of Jewish song and of modern music, all things the Nazis despised, wrapped in quaint pseudo-medievalism.  Significantly, Helmut Scherchen, champion of new music, worked with Hartmann on  the concept.  Again and again, Hartmann's contemporaries like Braunfels, Schreker and Honegger (all of whom I've been writing about for ages) used history for subversion, not as dreamy romance.  Nazis glorified nostalgia. Sharp-minded composers saw through the bluff.  Hartmann's angular lines are meant to grate, not soothe.  Hartmann's Simplicius is didactic: Brecht's ideas on theatre adapted to music, "imagined theatre" as Henze called it, concepts of music drama still evolving today. Please read my piece on Beat Furrer's FAMA HERE.   

This has a bearing on performance, which is why I'm not at all convinced about naturalistic staging, whatever the period. A friend said of this Independent Opera production that the work might not have the cachet it has, had it been written ten years later. A perceptive comment, since it takes no brains to look back now on Nazi times. But there's a whole lot more to Hartmann's Simplicius than an anti-war narrative.  Hartmann's message is far more disturbing now that we may be entering troubled times where "the people" whoever they might be, are easily fooled by technological manipulation and demagogues without scruple. 

Simplicius is "Ein kleiner Bub bei den Schafen, kannte weder Gott noch Menschen, weder Himmel noch Hölle, weder Engel noch Teufel. Notice the pattern of opposite images, which flows throughout the opera. The text is set in rhyming couplets, typical of German tradition, and the music moves in a similar grave two-step. Simplicius is a "Holy Innocent", so pure he knows nothing of heaven or hell. In Tarot the Fool signifies someone who goes forth into the world without fear, facing danger but protected by his purity. Siegfried without the selfishness. Hartmann sets the part for high soprano though the role is male, to emphasize youth and innocence.

"Beware of the Wolf" warns the farmer. Wolf of course was Hitler's nickname, which he was rather proud of.  Simplicius doesn't know what a wolf is. so when the Landknecht  appears he thinks the Horseman is the vierbeiniger Schelm und Dieb the farmer warned about. "Weiss nit, Herr Wolf" cries Simplicius but the Landknecht attacks the farm and kills the Knän, die Meuder und das kleine Ursele (these archaic words give the piece a deliberate old-world air). A long passage describing the horrors of war, which ends with O armes geknechtetes Deutschland. Now Simplicius has wised up and heads into the forest where he meets a Hermit (another Tarot figure). The Hermit sings music like stylized monastic chant, wavering weirdly. He teaches Simplicius to sing Unser Vater (Our Father). Give us our daily bread". Simplicius, incorrigibly naive, asks auch Käs dazu? (and cheese, too?) Eventually the Hermit dies, leaving Simplicius to face the world alone. Provocatively, Hartmann writes into the death music an echo of the Kaddish.

After another powerful intermezzo,with swirling strings, plunging brass, evoking storms and storm clouds perhaps, Simplicius flies into the Governor's mansion. The soldiers boast of their tyranny and blaspheme. This chorus sound like drunken communal singing in a beer cellar, also a reference perhaps to the Nazis. This time Simplicius pipes up "that's no way to speak". "Can you hear the Mauskopf piepsen shouts the Governor. And of course, Simplicius's music is flute and clarinet. The Governor recites rather than sings, not Sprechstimme but something discordant, a lot like the speeches made where sense mattered less than sound. Some things don't change!  Then Simplicius speaks, at length. Words pour out at a shrill rapid pace, almost no time to take a breath. 
Simplicius harangues the listeners, without music to soften the effect. As she finds her strength her words are supported by drums. A militant but not military march?  And why?

Suddenly, Simplicius's voice rises in song. Es dröhnt die Stadt, es stapft daher, schäumende bitt're Jammersg'walt.  She's joined by the chorus, now representing farmers. The music suggests march: an unnerving reminder that the victims of war can easily become perpetrators of another.  The peasants sing "Ein gleich Gesetz, das woll'n wir han, vom Fürtsen bis zu Bauersmann" but they kill the rich folks anyway. Is this a revolt? The peasants simply stand and stare.  What's changed?  Darkness falls. Simplicius stands by the corpses. "Gepreisen sei der Richter der Wahrheit!"  The peasants hum quietly, wordlessly. Does this signify smoke or unthinking acquiesence? The Specher reminds us that by 1648, 8 million Germans were killed, nearly a quarter of the population at the time.  The music erupts in manic march. Is the cycle repeating?

Hartmann's Simplicius might well be something left unstaged, or minimally staged, since it is theatre of the mind.  In times when The People's Will takes precedence, maybe the mind, or the conscience preserves an individual, as Hartmann discovered in his "internal emigration".   I've written a lot on  Simplicius Simplicissismuss and on other works by K A Hartmann over the years, and also about other composers of the period. Please use labels below and at right.  Two recordings of Simplicius stand out : Heinz Fricke from 1985, and much better and punchier, Ulf Schirmer conducting the Münchener Rundfunksorchester with Camilla Nylund, Michael Volle, Willi Hartmann and Christian Gerhaher in 2009.  I have also heard Markus Stenz from Netherlands Radio, it's no match for  Schirmer and the idiomatic Munich style.

In Dark Hours, Karl Amadeus Hartmann

Whatever happens this November 8th, we are in for disturbing times. In Britain, we should be remembering The People's Court where judges dutifully carried out The Will of the People. Democracy is not the Triumph of the Will, nor the Rule of the Mob.  Farage is calling for mass marches on Parliament and/or the Courts of Law. Pitchforks and firebrands may not be so far away.  I could post pics of the Nazi People's Court, but I'm just so sick of fascist aggro that I won't. 

At times like these, we should draw faith from those whose lone voices withstood the tide, no matter how isolated they were. As always, Karl Amadeus Hartmann to the fore.  I've written extensively about him in the past. In Gesangsszene, he writes about the collapse of capitalism and civilized society. Read more here.   In Simplicius Simplicissimuss, he uses medievalism as cover for a savage indictment of war and false fuhrers.  Read more here and here.  And thus to Hartmann's Symphonische Hymnen written in 1943, when things must have seemed very dark indeed.  It is part of a triptych, the Sinfoniae drammaticae which was published in 1975, having been hidden among Hartmann's effects during his lifetime.  Symphonische Hymnen begins in turbulence, with sharp angular chords, like shards of glass in an explosion.  Fleet-footed figures swirl, as if tossed in a maelstrom. Violent pounding ostinato: but from which a delicate theme arises.  The line wavers : at the lower registers, it's firmly assertive rising again from a brief, violent interruption.  Gradually the solo line is reinforced by strings. As the piece progresses the angular chords return, this time dissipating into low, growling rumbles, brass accentuated by timpani.  A slow, quiet passage. Are we in the heart of the beast ?  The winds lead us slowly forward. A crash of cymbals and more low rumbling. The orchestra explodes again, but this time with frantic energy, ellipses on brass, whipping figures in the strings and a kind of staccato dance, which gives way to surprisingly beautiful moments of quasi-melody.  Do we hear metallic bells  what are these flurries of circular sound. The "dance" returns, wilder and more exuberant.  Sudden ominous silence, from which marching ostinato figures emerge. Whatever these may mean, the piece ends with manic flourish. 

Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimus broadcast today

A broadcast of K A Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus on BBC Radio 3 today, available online for 7 days. An anti-fascist, anti-war opera written in Germany while the Nazis were in power? K A Hartmann's Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend was a brave act of conscience, even though the opera wasn't publicly performed until 1948.

Simplicius Simplicissimus is loosely based on H J Chr Grimmelshausen's 1669 book, the frontispiece pictured here. The original was set in the Thirty Years War, a defining trauma in German history, barely appreciated in the English-speaking world. "Anno Domini 1618 wohnten 12 millionen in Deutschland" goes Hartmann's introduction. "Da kam der grosse Kreig". Thirty years later, only 4 million remained. Hartmann uses an alt Deutsch idiom but it's obvious what he really means.

Like the 1669 original, Hartmann sets the opera in tableaux, each act divided into different Bild or Speil subsections, like a series of stylized woodcuts. This formality creates an otherworldly edge to the horrific tale within. A thundering, brooding overture sets the mood of overwhelming chaos. Hartmann's orchestration is spartan: simple trumpets, drums, pipes, a modernist battaglia. From this the male voices develop, chanting in goose-step rhythms.

Simplicius appears. Ein kleiner Bub bei den Schafen, kannte weder Gott noch Menschen, weder Himmel noch Hölle, weder Engel noch Teufel. Notice the pattern of opposite images, which flows throughout the opera. The text is set in rhyming couplets, typical of German tradition, and the music moves in a similar grave two-step. Simplicius is a "Holy Innocent", so pure he knows nothing of heaven or hell. In Tarot the Fool signifies someone who goes forth into the world without fear, facing danger but protected by his purity. Siegfried without the selfishness. Hartmann sets the part for high soprano though the role is male, to emphasize youth and innocence.

"Beware of the Wolf" warns the farmer. Wolf of course was Hitler's nickname. Simplicius doesn't know what a wolf is. so when the Landknecht  appears he thinks the Horseman is the vierbeiniger Schelm und Dieb the farmer warned about. "Weiss nit, Herr Wolf" cries Simplicius but the Landknecht attacks the farm and kills the Knän, die Meuder und das kleine Ursele (these archaic words give the piece a deliberate old world air). A long passage describing the horrors of war, which ends with O armes geknechtetes Deutschland. Now Simplicius has wised up and heads into the forest where he meets a Hermit (another Tarot figure). The Hermit sings music like stylized monastic chant, wavering weirdly. He teaches Simplicius to sing Unser Vater (Our Father). Give us our daily bread". Simplicius, incorrigibly naive, asks auch Käs dazu? (and cheese, too?) Eventually the Hermit dies, leaving Simplicius to face the world alone. Provocatively, Hartmann writes into the death music an echo of the Kaddish.

Another powerful intermezzo, swirling strings, plunging brass, depicting storm clouds perhaps, as Simplicismus is flown into the Governor's mansion. The soldiers boast of their tyranny and blaspheme. This chorus sound like drunken communal singing in a beer cellar, also a reference perhaps to the Nazis. This time Simplicius pipes up "that's no way to speak". "Can you hear the Mauskopf piepsen shouts the Governor. And of course, Simplicius's music is flute and clarinet. The Governor recites rather than sings, not Sprechstimme but oddly discordant. He can't figure the simpleton out.

Then Simplius speaks, at length. Words pour out at a shrill rapid pace, almost no time to take a breath. Using speech instead of song was a deliberate device by Hartmann to confront the audience. Simplicius harangues the listeners, without music to soften the effect. As she finds her strength her words are supported by drums. A militant but not military march? Then suddenly her voice rises in song. Es dröhnt die Stadt, es stapft daher, schäumende bitt're Jammersg'walt. She's joined by the chorus now representing farmers, the victims of the Thirty Years War. Gepriesen sei der Richter der Wahrheit! sings Simplicius, now transformed into a symbol of hope. Behind her muffled drums and cymbals, the choir now softly humming, and the Specher reminds us that by 1648, 8 million Germans were killed.

Significantly, Hartmann dedicated the 1955/6 revision to Carl Orff whose Carmina Burana used a similar fake medieval context, which the Nazis loved, though they missed the subversive undercurrents. Hartmann knew what it was like living in a police state. More double-edged meaning. Simplicissimus is also the title of a magazine that satirized all abuses of power, military, political and religious. It was based in Munich, where Hartmann lived. While the stylized formality presages Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Simplicius Simplicissimus stems from the Weimar tradition of political theatre.

 If you like Simplicius Simplicissimus, try Hartmann's Gesangsszene, a prophecy of total collapse, which is eerily prescient of the present economic meltdown. Read more here. More on Hartmann and other composers of this period and persuasion here than on any other site.

The BBC Broadcast is a performance by Juliane Banse, Will Hartmann,, Peter Marsch, Ashley Holland and others, conducted by Markus Stenz with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.  I don't know if it will come near the Munich performance some years back, which is the best recording available, (more here)

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!

Hartmann Gesangszene - prophecy of collapse

Politicans dare not say what many economists feel in their hearts. This present "recession" is something that cannot be solved by any kind of quantitative easing. It's the biggest financial cataclysm ever known, exacerbated by the sheer size of the world economy and its dependence on technology. Sorry, guys, but this is a Collapse.

So listen to K A Hartmann's Gesangs Szene (1961/2) based on Jean Giradoux Sodom et Gomorrhe (1943). There's an excellent performance from the Berliner Phiharmoniker with Goerne who sings this frequently and with great force). Also recordings by Kubelik/Fischer-Dieskau, (even better orchestrally), Rickenbacher/Nimsgern and early Metzmacher.  Both were written in crisis situations, Hartmann, who had survived the Nazis, may have felt that the Cold War and nuclear weapons would bring about even more destruction. This text deals with empires so powerful they seem invincible.  Giradoux ostensibly writes of Sodom and Gomorrah whose proud empire stretches as far as India. But then an archangel appears in the Heavens and Sodom and Gomorah are wiped out in an instant.

A long, 150 bar introduction paints the scene. Solo flute hovers over the busy tumult in the orchetrsa, followed by oboe, clarinet and basson, played with strange, unsettling distortion (especially vivid in Kubelik's recording).  Sudden, savage discords. From this emerges the baritone, like a macabre master of ceremonies. "Das ist derschönste Spielbeginn". Very calm and controlled but all the scarier for what he has to tell/ "We have seen", he sings, "empires, especially the strongest and fastest-growing and those with the most secure guarantees of stabilty...at the height of their powers of invention and ingenuity..." So technogically advanced was this empire that it marshalled the seas and skies, conquered illness, darkness, ugliness and the weather, cured the common cold and synthesized diamonds. So when Goerne sings the third verse "Wir alle haben Reiche sturzen sehen", it's like a one man chorus in a Greek tragedy.

Then suddenly the voice hushes. A sudden sickness, thought to be extinct, develops and kills the healthiest and strongest.  The text specifically mentions "the mortgages of God" being foreclosed. Suddenly the great halls of power are deserted. "The Wolf is found in the centre of the city, and lice on the bald heads of millionaires".

At first voice and orchestra alternate, then gradually combine. Angular ostinatos underline the voice "Das Übel der Großen Reiche ! Das Tödliche Übel ! (the evil of great empires, the evil, ofv death). It's horrible, horrifying. Huge swirling figures in then orchestra, like windstorms, crashing cymbals - and very quiet drum beats and single notes on harp. "And in this storm, these thundering wavees, this war of wars, nothing survives  but bankruptcy and disgrace, the face of a child, distorted by hunger, the cry of a mad woman....and Death". 

The text has a difficult, wordy syntax, so Hartmann sets it like speech, the solemn pace part of the horror. At times, it feels like quasi-sermon, for there is moral indignation behind the simple, matter-of-fact delivery. The singer hardly needs to rise about semi-speech, the meaning is so intense. Along reprise of the intrioduction, where the symbol of the flute is made clear. "In jedes Vogellied hat ein grauenhafter Ton scheingeschlichen..... Und die Bäche sind clar und spiegelblank die Quellen" The orchestra plays "watery" sounds, wavering and insecure. "Aber ich habe das Wasser gekostet, es ist das Wasser der Sintflut. "
 The oceans the Empire controlled have broken their bounds, nature is wiping out the traces of this grand civilization. But nature has been irrevocably polluted. The waters of the stream are clear, but they're the waters of the Great Flood. The sun is scorching, but it's boiling pitch, unsafe for man. And the song of the bird (the flute) bursts out from its throatlike inexorable thunder.

Hartmann didn't finish setting the last strophe, because he died. So it's intoned as slow speech,  unaccompanied by the orchestra. This numb understatement has dramatic effect, as if suggesting the trauma is too bitter to contemplate. Es ist ein Ende der Welt ! Das Traurigste von allen!".  It is the end of the world, the saddest of all.

Only three years ago it seemed that champagne would never stop flowing and things like bribing people to buy expensive cars would kickstart  the economy. Silly bandaids that don't address the structural faults in the system. No-one knows the answers but no-one dares voice the possibilty that what this cancer needs is major surgery and the political equivalent of chemotherapy. No government is getting out of this mess alone. We're facing the scary prospects of the fall of capitalism as we know it, and it's not going to lift if we think only of our own patch. It feels like the 30's all over. Ironically, what lifted that slump was war. This time, war is part of the cause.

Drought ends - online listening glut

After weeks of drought, the deluge has broken. So much to listen to online this week. First, grab the last chance to hear Jiri Belohlávek conduct the BBCSO in Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Wonderful, lively performance, rustic but not bucolic. Czech cast, and native born speaker as conductor, not that it matters quite so much in Smetana as in Janáček, but still, they can concentrate oin singing not syntax. This one's so good it could make it to CD but catch it now.

Then what promises to be an intelligent Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust from Chicago Lyric Opera. I haven't heard it yet but the singers are John Relyea, (world's best Devil) Susan Graham and Paul Groves. If that's not enough recommendation, conductor is Sir Andrew Davis who is very, very good in this repertoire. The photos indicate intelligent staging, too. So much for the excuse that the damned Gilliam Damnation at the ENO was acceptable because the piece isn't often staged. C'mon, it's not that hard. This may be the purgative. Listen HERE.

Every morning this week the 10 am slot (available anytime HERE) features a different work by C  Hubert Parry, much underrated.  Unfortunately, there's a John Bridcut TV doc about him on Friday night (7.30, BBC4) which does not sound promising, even without HRH Prince Charles enthusing. Part of the reason Parry isn't better appreciated than he should be is that he's saddled with an old fogey Establishment image. The real Parry was a much more enlightened man. Just as Parry's coming out of the ghetto of WASP, his "admirers" might just want him thrown back in.

Saturday Night's BBC Radio 3 opera slot is Moisey (Mieczyslaw) Weinberg's The Portrait, from Opera North's production last year. Publicity blurbs are notorious for picking out good comments from damning reviews but this one stretches credulity so much it's hilarious. (follow the links on the ON site).

But as usual, it's the Berliner Philharmoniker that takes the honours. The repeat of Abbado's Das Lied von der Erde isn't available yet, but last week's concert is available in the archive, featuring Yutaka Sado's debut. Takemitsu and Shostakovich 5.  This Saturday, a big Bruckner symophony for those who love Bruckner, but for me the HUGE MUST will be K A Hartmann's  Gesangsszene (Song Scene), an incredibly prescient piece on economic and political meltdown. But written decades ago! Matthias Goerne sings. It's become one of his trademark pieces and he does it better than anyone (leaves the two current recordings for dead).

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.

Hartmann Die Witwe von Ephesus

A short sample of K A Hartmann's Die Witwe von Ephesus. The whole opera is only 11 minutes but go get the CD for more. Highly recommended. Beware anyone who thinks this is "opera" in the usual sense. Two main protagonists, "He" and "She" with four lesser parts, one of which is spoken and another a Cat that miaows. Some of the parts are interchangeable, so it's probably not stageable. How do you get a hanged man to sing? Extremely spare, but tightly written orchestration, which fits the essence of Hartmann's ethos. No waste, no fuss. Sharpness of delivery, quick timing. A man is condemned because "He who doesn't work, doesn't eat. Who doesn't eat, can't live. Ergo, we hang him". Ephesus 2000 years ago uncannily like the present. And his "widow" soon changes her mind. Please see my other pieces on Hartmann including Simplicius Simplicissimuss and Gesangsszene.

Europe's Tragedy - Simplicissimus

This is the "Defenestration of Prague", an incident that sparked off  the bloodiest conflagration in Europe before the 20th century.  It's a scary image, bearing  in mind what happened to Jan Masaryk in the early years of the Cold War. 

K A Hartmann's Des Simplcius Simplicissimus Jugend, (read my review HERE). ("Covert Resistance - An anti-facist, anti-war opera written in Germany while the Nazis were in power?") inspired me to find out more about the Thirty Years War.

By odd coincidence, the recording came out soon after the publication of Peter H Wilson's Europe's Tragedy : a history of the Thirty Year's War (2009)  It covers the period more comprehensively and intensively than anything else in English before. It shows how tensions in society erupt into conflict. This was the real "First World War" because all Europe was involved, and overseas empires. At 1000 pages it's not light reading, yet gripping enough that it can be followed as narrative.  Wilson's methodology is sound, his prose clear. A model reference work. This is an extremely important book because it shows how modern Europe was shaped. What happened nearly 400 years ago impacts on us today.

Back to Simplicius Simplicissimus  the saga that grew from The Thirty Years War.  There's a new edition. "Nun ist er lebendiger denn je. Denn in Reinhard Kaisers Übersetzung liest sich das Werk endlich nicht mehr verstaubt und verquält – man versteht, welcher Lebensquell damals der Bezug auf das abendländische Erbe war" Read more about it HERE

Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimus

An anti-fascist, anti-war opera written in Germany while the Nazis were in power? K A Hartmann's Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend was a brave act of conscience, even though the opera wasn't publicly performed until 1948.

Simplicius Simplicissimus is loosely based on H J Chr Grimmelshausen's 1669 book, the frontispiece pictured here. The original was set in the Thirty Years War, a defining trauma in German history, barely appreciated in the English-speaking world. "Anno Domini 1618 wohnten 12 millionen in Deutschland" goes Hartmann's introduction. "Da kam der grosse Kreig". Thirty years later, only 4 million remained. Hartmann uses an alt Deutsch idiom but it's obvious what he really means.

There's a new edition, recently recorded by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ulf Schirmer. The singing too is way above average, which in itself makes this a top recommendation : Michael Volle, Christian Gerhaher, Camilla Nylund and Will Hartmann. It's live, too, recorded in a small theatre, which adds to the atmosphere. This performance is vividly dramatic. Even if you don't understand a word of German, the impact is clear.

Like the 1669 original, Hartmann sets the opera in tableaux, each act divided into different Bild or Speil subsections, like a series of stylized woodcuts. This formality creates an otherworldy edge to the horrific tale within. A thundering, brooding overture sets the mood of overwhelming chaos. Hartmann's orchestration is spartan: simple trumpets, drums, pipes, a modernist battaglia. From this the male voices develop, chanting in goose-step rhythms.

Simplicius appears. Ein kleiner Bub bei den Schafen, kannte weder Gott noch Menschen, weder Himmel noch Hölle, weder Engel noch Teufel. Notice the pattern of opposite images, which flows throughout the opera. The text is set in rhyming couplets, typical of German tradition, and the music moves in a similar grave two-step.

Simplicius is a "Holy Innocent", so pure he knows nothing of heaven or hell. In Tarot the Fool signifies someone who goes forth into the world without fear, facing danger but protected by his purity. Siegfried without the selfishness. Hartmann sets the part for high soprano though the role is male: Nylund's lucid, clear tones are perfect.

"Beware of the Wolf" warns the farmer (Michael Volle, with solemn bucolic gravity). Wolf of course was Hitler's nickname. Simplicius doesn't know what a wolf is. so when the Landknecht (Gerhaher) appears he thinks the Horseman is the vierbeiniger Schelm und Dieb the farmer warned about. "Weiss nit, Herr Wolf" cries Simplicius but the Landknecht attacks the farm and kills the Knän, die Meuder und das kleine Ursele (these archaic words give the piece a deliberate old world air). Nylund sings a long passage describing the horrors of war, which ends with O armes geknechtetes Deutschland.

Now Simplicius has wised up and heads into the forest where he meets a Hermit (another Tarot figure). The Hermit (Will Hartmann) sings music like stylized monastic chant, wavering weirdly. He teaches Simplicius to sing Unser Vater (Our Father). Give us our daily bread". Simplicius, incorrigibly naive, asks auch Käs dazu? (and cheese, too?) Eventually the Hermit dies, leaving Simplicius to face the world alone. Provocatively, Hartmann writes into the death music an echo of the Kaddish.

Another powerful intermezzo, swirling strings, plunging brass, depicting storm clouds perhaps, as Simplicismus is flown into the Governor's mansion. The soldiers boast of their tyranny and blaspheme. This chorus sound like drunken communal singing in a beer cellar, also a reference perhaps to the Nazis. This time Simplicius pipes up "that's no way to speak". "Can you hear the Mauskopf piepsen shouts the Governer. And of course, Simplicius's music is flute and clarinet. The Governer (Volle) recites rather than sings, not Sprechstimme but oddly discordant. He can't figure the simpleton out.

Then Nylund's tour de force. Words pour out of her at a shrill rapid pace, almost no time to take a breath. Using speech instead of song was a deliberate device by Hartmann to confront the audience. Simplicius harangues the listeners, without music to soften the effect. As she finds her strength her words are supported by drums. A militant but not military march? Then suddenly her voice rises in song. Es dröhnt die Stadt, es stapft daher, schäumende bitt're Jammersg'walt. She's joined by the chorus now representing farmers, the victims of the Thirty Years War. Gepriesen sei der Richter der Wahrheit! sings Simplicius, now transformed into a symbol of hope. Behind her muffled drums and cymbals, the choir now softly humming, and the Specher reminds us that by 1648, 8 million Germans were killed.

Significantly, Hartmann dedicated the 1955/6 revision to Carl Orff whose Carmina Burana used a similar fake medieval context, which the Nazis loved, though they missed the subversive undercurrents. Hartmann knew what it was like living in a police state. More double-edged meaning. Simplicissimus is also the title of a magazine that satirized all abuses of power, military, political and religious. It was based in Munich, where Hartmann lived. While the stylized formality presages Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Simplicius Simplicissimus stems from the Weimar tradition of political theatre.

As a plus,there's a half hour discussion with recordings of Hartmann's voice on the second CD in this set. As a minus, this set falls down as there's no translation. One might think that an opera where German-language speech rhythms are so important won't need translation because anyone listening will be fluent. But many of the words are archaic, not that easy for non-native speakers to follow. And non-Germans need to know this opera, to better understand Germany, the experience of war and the role of modern music. Get it HEREHartmann: Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend

Hartmann Gesangsszene Goerne

"..and in this storm, these thundering waves, this war of wars, nothing survives but bankruptcy and disgrace, the face of a child, distorted by hunger, the cry of a madman - and Death"

Karl Amadeus Hartmann's rarely-heard Gesangsszene is a powerful vision of a proud society that seemed to have everything: prosperity,progress, even a cure for the common cold. Then, suddenly it's destroyed by "the sickness of great empires". (For my more recent piece on this work, please see HERE) It's horrifyingly prophetic because there are references to banking and economic collapse, even to "God's mortgages". Hartmann was writing in 1961, when the Americans were pitted against the Russians, and the Berlin Wall was built. He knew all about the flaws of even the greatest empires; he'd resisted the Nazis, not by emigrating like so many others, but by "internal exile", refusing to make music while the regime lasted. Then came Hiroshima (Hartmann specifically refers to the empire "finding atoms in cells") unparalleled material wealth, the "German miracle"and the Cold War. As a lifelong socialist who'd seen the Great Depression and war, Hartmann notes that Empires crumble, "especially the ones with apparently the most secure guarantees of stability".

Gesangsszene starts with long, haunting solo flute melody which gradually becomes tonally ambiguous as blasts from trumpets and trombones interrupt. Crescendi build up in the orchestra, richly, the flute's warning barely heard above the tumult. Then, suddenly, baritone Matthias Goerne materializes from within the orchestra: "Das ist derschönste Spielbeginn". It is beautiful and all the more terrifying for that. The text has a difficult, wordy syntax, so Hartmann sets it like speech, making the most of the solemn pace. At times, it feels like quasi-sermon for there is moral indignation behind the simple, matter-of-fact setting. When Goerne sings the third verse "Wir alle haben Reiche sturzen sehen", it's like a chorus.

At first voice and orchestra alternate, then gradually combine. Angular ostinatos underline the voice "Das Übel der Großen Reiche ! Das

Tödliche Übel ! It's horrible, horrifying. Huge swirling figures in then orchestra, like windstorms, crashing cymbals - and very quiet drum beats and single notes on harp.

"In jedes Vogellied hat ein grauenhafter Ton scheingeschlichen..... Und die Bäche sind clar und spiegelblank die Quellen" The orchestra plays "watery" sounds, wavering and insecure"Aber ich habe das Wasser gekostet, es ist das Wasser der Sintflut. " Hartmann didn't finish setting the last strophe, because he died. So it's intoned, unaccompanied. It could easily be done with silly histrionics, but Goerne chose a more dignified, simple style, closer to the numb understatement that runs throughout the piece. "Es ist ein Ende der Welt ! Das Traurigste von allen!". Not just one end of the world - it happens again and again, we never learn.

http://www.musicomh.com/classical/lpo-goerne_0908.htm