Vienna to Weimar - Song recital

The real star of this recital at Kings Place on 27th January, part of the Vienna to Weimar week, was Erik Levi, who compiled the excellent programme. It was erudite and intelligent, an excellent introduction to that era in song. You can replicate the recital with recordings. It's almost impossible to describe the programme fully here, but maybe this will give some background.

Starting with Franz Schreker's Die feurige Männlein put the whole theme of Vienna to Weimar in context. It's a violent, dissonant song about a horseman cloaked in flames who brings havoc and death to the world. Written in 1915, it's fairly obvious what Schreker's getting at. In this Apocalypse the horseman's a miserable troll. Perhaps it was a mercy that Schreker died before the Holocaust. This song relates to Die Gezeichneten, of which I've written HERE.

Hans Gál escaped early to Scotland and livd to be 97. His Five Songs (1917-21) are beautiful. Listen to audio samples HERE. Der Weissenbach is a lovely miniature. I also love Gál's Das Vöglein Schwermut, more lyrical than Zemlinsky's setting. These were Christian Immler's finest moments in the recital. It's him on the sound clip, with Erik Levi on the piano! Very evocative postludes and preludes, in the recital well played by Helmut Deutsch. And Drei Prinzessinnen (Bethge), with a delicate, refined mood of melancholy. Yet the line expands zu den Ufern, wo die Freiheit wohnt. Immler sings the world Freiheit with fullness and feeling, for it's the goal the princesses will never reach.

Hearing these Berthold Goldschmidt songs, Ein Rosenweig and Nebelweben, made me feel Sensucht too, because I used to have a recording of them with Goldschmidt playing. Even if I replace the one I gave away, it won't be quite the same. The CD I had belonged to Goldschmidt himself. It's a long story which I'll save for another time. Goldschmidt led the Matthews brothers in their performing version of Mahler's 10th, but was a fairly self-effacing man, whose music didn't get into the repertoire until fairly late in his life. Incidentally he himself was taught by Franz Schreker, among others.

Hanns Eisler gets a bad press because he's mostly known in the US for being kicked out of Hollywood by the Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. His political music is extremely important. In many ways it was he who gave Brecht more backbone than Weill did. his political songs tie in with the Brecht belief in direct communication, which is why they're simple and can be sung by untrained voices. and performed in non-concert-hall situations. That's how to reach the masses. But there's a lot more to Eisler.

Here we heard some of Eisler's Galgenlieder, much closer to the sophisticated, exquisitely crafted art songs and chamber pieces that Eisler's reputation really should be based upon. They're literate, whimsical songs. Die beiden Trichter, for example, needs to be read from the page because the visual shape of the poem, as written, is crucial to its meaning. Two funnels pour into a single source til the last drop fades away. The poem's shaped like a triangle, wider at the top, ending with just a "w". As does Eisler's music, ending with a single note.  HERE is a link to Eisler's song Cripple Brigade. LOTs of Eisler on this site.

Eisler also wrote quirky little pieces based on snippets from the newspapers, ideas condensed to haiku-like extremes. Not at all populist in the usual sense, but if you like cryptic crosswords, you might like this other aspect of Hanns Eisler.

One of the myths about Erich Korngold popular on the internet is that he was only "forced" into writing for the movies by the Nazis. In fact, he was smart enough to realize long before the Anschluss that film had a future, the "opera" of the New World. Surprisingly, there aren't all that many settings of Shakespeare, so Korngold's Songs of the Clown have a place in the repertoire. It's interesting to think about Korngold adapting to Anglo culture, writing music for Robin Hood, Elizabeth and Essex and of course adapting Mendelssohn's Midsummer's Nights Dream.

It's also interesting to think of Hanns Eisler writing hits in Hollywood, though he began with uncompromising Kuhle Wampe (watch full download HERE) and continued to write art music for documentaries like Resnais's Night and Fog, one of the best films about the Holocaust.

Prof Levi's programme thus turned to America. Zemlinsky didn't write for film, though he might have done great things given his feel for lushness. But he was interested in American music, meaning jazz. Quite a liberating thing for him, I think, a pity he died relarively young. Like many intellectuals of the time, he was interested in the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry of Langston Hughes. Grollen die Tomtoms, rollen die Tomtoms, grollen, rollen wecken das Blut. This is Hollywood Africa, exotic and louche, but it's fun music anyway. Which is perhaps why there are so many different recordings of Afrikanischer Tanz, and it's sometimes used as an encore. Listen to Michael Volle with James Conlon, definitely quirky and "lowdown".

More "Black America" seen through German eyes/ears in Eisler's Ballad of Nigger Jim. This is closer to the bone because Nigger Jim bucks Jim Crow and gets lynched. Eisler's ending parodies popular song but the message isn't funny. Similarly, Ballade von der Krüppelgarde,(op 18 1929/31) is a march, but the marchers are cripples. led by a Field Marshal who is a crawling torso. They've been maimed in war but no-one cares. So the rhythms are off centre, like the movements of men who can't march in line. It's horrific stuff despite the pretend insouciance. There's a truly biting recording by Ernst Busch (of course). Wir sind die Krüppelgarde, das strärkste Batallion, die alleresrtes Reihe in der Weltrevolution. So what if the sentiments are left wing? It's a very good song. And in any case, things have not changed in this world.

An aside - strange how Weimar people were fascinated by things English/American. Brecht goes on and on about exotic places which really live in his mind. Nigger Jims abound in various forms.

Which leads to Ernst Krenek. After his smash hit Jonny Spielt Auf, with the iconic black musician, Krenek took a sabbatical in the Salzkammergut insteade of capitalizing on his success in Vienna. Krenek travelled light because he wanted to probe deeper into what shaped the Austrian psyche (as opposed to the Viennese).

The Reisebuch aus den Oesterreicheschen Alpen is a panorama of unforgiving mountain landscapes and the harsh lives of peasants before modern utilities. In 1927, they were just finishing the D numbers, and Schubert wasn't quite so ubiquitous as he is now. So Krenek's pilgrimage was also a means of engaging with what made a city boy like Schubert respond to the countryside as he did. Krenek's cycle (to his own poems) isn't High Romantic although it's beautiful. There are songs about rich Bavarians burning down the roads in leathers on motorbikes, and a mention of Hitler, not long after Hitler got out of prison. But then, Schubert set contemporary poetry, too.

Krenek's Reisebuch aus den Oesterreicheschen Alpen is such an important work that it really deserves to be written about in more detail than this, so I'll do something more on it later. Shockingly, there's only one recording, by Wolfgang Holzmair, made in 1998. It's beautiful, the CD cover designed to look like a 1920's photo album. Holzmair passionately champions the cycle and toured with it for several years. He also devised a concert programme where he mixed Krenek's songs with Schubert's. That too, he recorded, but on a small label, almost impossible to find. Since wrfiting this I've found Julius Patzak's even earlier recording, which is wonderful, too.

Please see my other posts on the Kings Place Vienna to Weimar event – lots of links. Also to full movie downloads. There's a lot on this site about the music of this period, one of my special interests.

Vienna to Weimar, Kings Place

This week's theme at Kings Place is "Vienna to Weimar" a subject I'm passionately interested in. As usual with Kings Place, top performers are the exception rather than the rule, but there'll be a rare chance to hear the Artis-Quartett Wien on Friday in Berg's famous Lyric Suite and a Zemlinsky String Quartet plus, really interesting, Wellesz and Weigl String Quartets. There's a story behind the Wellesz but let them tell that.

The other big concert for me is the song recital on 27th with Christian Immler, whom I have heard before, but what a wonderful programme. My beloved Eisler! And not the most famous songs, either. If I have time I'll wrote more about this programme because most of it isn't generally familiar, and each of the composers is very different. Lots and lots to talk about. Even the two Goldschmidt songs (Ein Rosenweig and Nebelweben) carry "stories". The Krenek songs come from a cycle I've written lots about over the years. It's one of his best works and should be heard more frequently, but in many ways doesn't really fit into the "Vienna/Weimar" concept though it deals with Schubertian Austria on the verge of Hitler.

There'll also be movies, the new art form of the period. Most of these films are classics, which most people will have seen before, like Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Unfortunately there are many clashes, so if you go to the song concert you'll miss the film of Die Dreigroschenoper. But on the other hand maybe that's not such a loss as the film is softer than the original. There are clips of the film HERE and a commentary.

Ssssh I shouldn't say this if you're buying tickets, but several of the other films have long been available on this site as full downloads, with commentary.

For Die blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) see HERE.

For Berlin : Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, please see HERE, with a long commentary. At present I'm doing something on black people in France and Germany at the time, There were thousands. A number were fairly successful professional actors, who made movies well into the Nazi period. Not all voluntarily, but still they should be remembered.

There are also films from the Fritz Lang triology about Dr Mabuse. In many ways these are even more fascinating than the more famous Dr Caligari, because the storylines are more complex and Dr Mabuse is a kind of symbol of evil.

Because film was such a new form, there weren't many models to copy, so many films in this era were pioneering. From the start Germans seemed to realize that films could be art as well as short term entertainment. Also on this site you can see Nosferatu, the greatest vampire movie of all, made in 1921/2 when the 1840's were within human memory. Click HERE.

And, of course the very important Kuhle Wampe, with music by Eisler and text by Bertholt Brecht, which is HERE. This is an amazing movie, take time to savour it.

Lots more to come!

A Winterreise Adventure

Last night I didn't just talk Winterreise, I lived it. Just as we left James Gilchrist's recital at Kings Place it started to snow. Atmospheric, since it hardly ever snows in London.

"You call that snow," sniffed my Siberian friend. But we get excited because it only snows (or slushes) maybe once every 5 years and last year was the first serious snow for 20 years. So cheerfully we set forth. As soon as we reached the motorway, out of the dark came a sudden blizzard, which dropped 20cm of snow in 90 minutes. Because no-one is used to such conditions, it was mayhem.The wind howled like in a typhoon, except that it was freezing, throwing sheets of snow against the windscreen. Complete whiteout. Passing a big crash on the other side (4 cars 1 truck) we decided to call it quits, and as soon as we could left the car which couldn't go up a hill, and walked the rest of the way.

Scary as this journey was, it was a good experience. Everyone knows the words, but what is the deeper sensation? A singer I knew once walked across the country carrying a backpack, giving Winterreise recitals along the way. It made him feel the music more because he'd struggled on the way. For me, the blizzard made me feel how we take things for granted. The man in Winterreise looks at familiar landmarks, but they're no longer what they were.

Snow absorbs sound, but just as it deadens background hum, it lets details spring out in stark contrast. One of Jorma Hynninen's recordings captures this effect. He sings quietly, mutedly, yet sharpens certain passages : the black crow against white clouds, pregnant with snow. The post horn sounds over long distances because it doesn't blend into the background.

Snow transforms. Part of my journey went through an industrial slum, but now it was covered with a pure, white blanket. Even the metal barriers and dustbins looked magical. The man in Winterreise's feelings are painful because they're raw. As he proceeds, they change. By the end, the girl is left behind in more ways than one. Even in his deepest anguish, the man sees beauty in the landscape around him. Listen to that piano part, the images of water! Beneath the frozen ice, the river surges. Melting droplets trickle, sharp figures sparkle, like icicles. Once I heard Imogen Cooper play Winterreise so magically, it made you "feel" the cold, the dark and the flashes of light. Wolfgang Holzmair seemed to be listening, taking in what nature might have to tell the man, even though he can't quite understand.

Landscape as a mirror of emotion: an aspect of Winterreise often overlooked when we focus on the pain and intensity. As James Gilchrist said before the concert, the protagonist goes through a huge range of feelings, from bitter anger to lyrical tenderness. And in this performance, with Anna Tilbrook as pianist, he certainly showed the range of feelings involved.

Landscape in the Romantic imagination is also part of meaning. Sometimes the song Die Nebensonnen has been dismissed as evidence that the man on the journey "must" be insane because he sees three suns in the sky and relates them to his lover's eyes. On the contrary, in extreme cold, the light of the sun can refract, so it appears as multiple images. I chose this photo because it captures the way the sun in dense blizzard conditions glows with an unnatural brightness: the glare can make you snowblind. It's a natural phenomenom, but hyper real and piercing. So what, then, does the Leiermann signify? Is he an illusion or a real beggar, feral, like the deer whose tracks the man follows in the beginning. This aspect of interpretation can impact on performance.

And snow can be dangerous. Someone was supposedly killed in the accident I passed. If the man in Winterreise was bent on death, all he had to do was lie under the Lindenbaum and the cold would soon lull him forever. Significantly, he passes the graveyard and goes beyond. Maybe the man does die, or go mad, but one surprising aspect of the cycle is that he chooses to keep moving on, even though it wouldn't take much effort for him to let the snow end his troubles.

As for the recital? Thoroughly satisying! Gilchrist doesn't have one of those lusciously creamy voices that draw attention to their own beauty at the expense of the music. If it's not a glorious instrument, though, he uses it intelligently, so you're drawn to what the music might mean. There are hundreds of Winterreises to listen to, but Gilchrist makes his personal and direct.

Someone told me that this concert was being recorded for CD. The acoustic at Hall One at Kings Place is so perfect that it's a disadvantage. It's so clear that it can expose all but the best. Yet, because the hall is small, the biggest names don't often appear. So using Kings Place for making recordings offers benefits to audiences and gives recordings a nice "live" ambience.

Please see my other posts on Gilchrist, Schubert and Kings Place
Photo credit

Kings Place opens with a bang !

Kings Place opened with a bang – literally – as the builders were still about hammering, while the first concert took place. Melinda Maxwell was playing Simon Holt's world premiere, Disparates, a work he'd written for her. It's beautiful, complex and contemplative. Definitely not oboe solo with "improvised percussion". Pity, but she deserves credit for perserverance.

Hall One at Kings Place is without doubt the most elegant concert hall in London, small but classically proportioned and blessed with an extremely clear acoustic. Ideal for chamber music and song. Hall Two is more spartan, but the concerts here turned out to be the biggest surprise of the whole opening day. Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan Centre is the biggest Indian culture centre outside India and is based in humble West Kensington ! Founded by Mahatma Gandhi himself, it's the Indian equivalent of RCM, RAM, Guildhall, Kings and the Juilliard put together –producing seriously dedicated performers. Indian culture stresses the unity of the arts – music, speech, dance, visual. So we saw dancers, heard musicians and took part in a workshop about tala, Indian rhythms, and how they can be infinitely varied and extended. There I was, beating time merrily, but it's OK, Indian music is interactive, audiences are part of the process. Since so much new western music uses ideas from Indian form, it was a surprise that there weren't many western musicians or composers present. They could have learned so much. Messiaen, for example uses tala and variations, Indian "form" created by tempo changes and directional plateaux rather than formal western symphonic structure. The musicians themselves are articulate, highly enthusiastic about sharing their art. They took over the workshop from the scheduled speaker and wow ! They could demonstrate, counting time as they played. Number sequences are part of Indian rhythm because basic sets are multiplied for melody : no wonder Messiaen heard in it the "music of mathematics". Fantastic ! See link below – they do regular concerts and courses all year round.

As for Kings Place, it's strikingly beautiful, all glass, chrome and marble. And surrounded by canals, so a good place for a drink. Whether it will make money, I'm not sure. It's too small for celebrity names, though excellent for small, intimate music. Innovative programming, too. Each week will be "curated" by different people so there's always an eclectic mix of ideas. Consistency probably doesn't matter so much as long as most of it's exciting. Two days are set side for regular things like talk and new music, but will these be enough to sustain a venue without regular paid-for outside concerts such as support the Wigmore Hall ? Maybe having offices upstairs will bring in steady, predictable income so it will work. It deserves to !
http://www.bhavan.net/
http://www.musicomh.com/classical/kp-day1_1008.htm

Kings Place, King's Cross

Kings Place, King's Cross - remember where the apostrophes go, because we'll be seeing a lot of that phrase. This is the biggest new arts venture in London since the Barbican opened in 1982. Think how that changed things - think what Kings Place might do. Kings Place is an imaginative answer to the perennial problem of what to do about art forms that are too important to neglect yet don't attract mass audiences. Simple ! Build flexible performance spaces that lend themselves to intimate, human-scale events ! Hall One seats 450, a few less than the Wigmore Hall, while Hall Two seats around 200. So at last, purpose-built spaces for chamber music, art song, new music, early music, baroque. There's also a huge emphasis on jazz, world music etc but I don't know enough about that to comment. (I'll never get important, then !) Hall One is completely lined with wood from ONE ancient German oak. In mythology oak spirits bring good fortune, so let's hope ! The acoustic is supposed to be good and very warm, ideal.

Please look at these two links. The first is a wonderful video about the building and its setting, surrounded by canals and currently urban decay (but soon will be ultra trendy).
http://www.kingsplace.co.uk/media-room/videos

The second link is to a preview on OMH Music about the opening celebration "Five Days, One Hundred Concerts!" Yes, 100 concerts, many free. Everything from Ligeti's 100 metronome installation to baroque ensembles, to South Indian music to "the English Ry Cooder".
http://www.musicomh.com/classical/features/kings-place_0908.htm

King's Place - London's new arts hub

This is where we'll be spending lots of time in the next few years ! On October 1st, King's Place will open near King's Cross. Exciting architecture, and very interesting impact on the surrounding area. Plus it will be "South Bank North", home to the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment. and "Aldeburgh South" hosting Aldeburgh connected events. This morning the post brought the full brochure with details of the 100 concerts planned, the facilities etc. Steve Reich, Ligeti's 100 Metronomes etc. Seems too they will be heavy on outreach, with lots on world music, jazz, community and even Lieder! Here is a link to an article in the Independent. Why are visual arts and architecture writers usually better than music writers ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/a-wealth-of-sound-kings-place-concert-hall-909507.html