Smetana Dalibor Barbican Bělohlávek

Jiří Bělohlávek's annual Czech opera series at the Barbican, London, with the BBC SO continiued  with Bedřich Smetana's Dalibor.  Bělohlávek has done more than anyone to bring authentic Czech music to Britain, and to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he was Chief Conductor for many years.  They've got the idiom under their skin, now, and for Bělohlávek they played with expressive vigour. Smetana has been called "The Father of Czech Music", for he was the first to embrace characteristic Czech folk style, fused with the bright, sharp syntax of the Czech language. Dalibor is a particularly important milestone, since it's explicitly nationalistic.  though disguised as folklore. The Hapsburgs ruled Bohemia from Vienna, and after 1848 clamped down on what they saw as sedition.  Dalibor took part in an uprising, destroying a castle and killing the burgrave. Although Smetana downplays the politics (to escape the censors) the message of Dalibor is loud and clear: Czechs love music, and with music they shall triumph over repression.

Dalibor is a hero: "Dalibor! Dalibor" the chorus (the BBC Singers) rings out with fervour, picked up wordlessly by the orchestra throughout the opera. Jitka, a country girl (Alžběta Poláčková) tells us how he saved her as an orphan. Already though, we have a hint of his otherworldly purity. She sings as though she's describing a saint.  Wonderful "processional" music marks the entry of Vladislav, the Czech King (Ivan Kusnjer). Bělohlávek has been bringing the top singers from the Prague  National Theatre, which he's been conducting for years, so these singers are now greeted in London as if they were familiar friends.  Besides, they can sing Czech repertoire better than anyone else. Kusnjer's voice rang with dignity. Like Pontius Pilate, this King doesn't want to kill, but  Milada the Burgrave's sister wants revenge.

Dana Burešova sang Milada. She's another much-loved regular visitor.  She sang the female lead in The Jacobin, The Bartered Bride and most of Bělohlávek's other London performances of Czech opera.  Milada is a forceful lady, and Burešova's magnificent singing does her justice. The part calls for great vocal control, for the lines ring out with the intensity of a trumpet call, though  Milada's femininity is underlined by lustrous harp. Later Milada disguises herself as a harp-playing minstrel to charm her way into the prison.

Dalibor himself (Richard Samek) is more of an enigma. He killed the Burgrave because the Burgrave killed his friend Zdenek, who doesn't appear in the opera, but lingers, ghost-like, in the strings. Zdenek was a violinist, and Dalibor's love for him is so great that he'd rather be dead than live without him. Nonetheless, when he meets Milada, his love suddenly switches to her (on Zdenek's musical messages). Dalibor's a violinist, too. We don't hear him play but we hear the violins in the orchestra surround him in a halo of sound.  The smooth legato in his part suggests a bow gliding over strings.  Beneš the jailer ( Jan Stava), also a violinist, lets him have his old instrument to pass the time, which Milada delivers. The violin is thus the means by which Dalibor could escape from the dungeon. If he wished, of course, because he doesn't. When he's caught by Budivoj (Svatopluc Sem, another regular)  and told he's to be executed, he's meekly accepting. Perhaps he knows that his real secret weapon isn't his life but his music.

"We Czechs love music" the text explicitly states, so the whole opera is a coded protest, though the Hapsburg Empire ended only with the end of the First World War. Dalibor is wildly popular in Czech-speaking areas but the message is universal. When Gustav Mahler conducted Dalibor in Vienna in 1892, he may also have been making a private statement.  Mahler was a boy from small town Bohemia, where his father had followed the same profession as Smetana's father had done nearly 100 years before. Unlike Smetana, Mahler made it to the capital of the Hapsburg empire, chosen and protected by the Emperor himself.  Much is made of Mahler's use of Ländler, reflecting the sounds he would have grown up with in a German-speaking area in the provinces.  Mahler had been writing since his teens on themes connected to Des Knaben Wunderhorn, even writing his own poems. Almost certainly he would have been aware of Smetana  In Dalibor, for example, Jitka and Vitek (Aleš Voráček) sing a love duet which could come straight out of Wunderhorn, though it's clearly Czech. Dalibor is clearly inspired by Beethoven Fidelio, although musically it's very different. But might Mahler have thought of Dalibor when he wrote Das  Lied des Verfolgten im Turm with its passionate refrain,  "Die Gedanken sind frei! "

Photos: Roger Thomas

Christian Gerhaher Mahler Wigmore Hall

Star singer and star composer, a combination guaranteed to bring in the fans. Christian Gerhaher sang Mahler at the Wigmore Hall with Gerold Huber. Gerhaher shot to fame when he sang Wolfram  at the Royal Opera House Tannhäuser in 2010 (read my review here),  His "O du, mein holder Abendstern" was so sublimely beautiful that it seemed  to come from beyond the realms of reality. Wolfram is not so much a character in an opera as an almost divine symbol of  Knightly Virtue. But does the idealized perfection of Wartburg triumph over Venusberg?  Tannhäuser didn't think so, and Elisabeth chooses Tannhäuser.

Pertinent thoughts with a significant bearing on Mahler performance practice. Gerhaher began with Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden  Gesellen. Far too much emphasis is placed on their autobiographical content. Like a Geselle, Mahler is learning his craft, through well-made "apprentice miniatures" that will form the basis of his symphonies from the first to the fourth, with echoes beyond  He was experimenting with the aesthetic of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the collection of poems and  ballads compiled from oral tradition by Achim von Armin and Clemens Brentano in 1805. The folk origins of this collection are significant, for they embodied early 19th century Romantic attitudes, not authentic "folk" tradition so much as reworkings by intellectuals for the fast-growing urban middle class. Mahler wasn't writing fake folk song but songs as themes  that will later be developed in sophisticated abstract form.

 Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen isn't a song cycle so much as a series of stand-alone songs, each of which illustrates an emotional state, from the energetic "Ging  heut' Morgen übers Feld " to the scherzo-like psychosis of "Ich hab'ein glühend Messer". A certain amount of detachment on the part of singer and pianist is reasonable, but Gerhaher and Huber didn't engage with the emotional changes. Gerhaher's pace was fractionally too slow, not perhaps enough for most to notice, but enough to keep voice and piano out of synch. Huber jumped in too forcefully.

A selection of songs based on Das Knaben Wunderhorn followed, including early songs from the  Lieder und Gesäng,e aus der Jugendzeit. Songs about children, but songs with a macabre twist, reflecting a very different attitude to youth than we hold today. After Bruno Bettelheim, we can't take fairy tales at surface value. Even the lyrical "Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz" describes a soldier who deserts his post and is executed. "Das irdische Leben" could deal with child abuse, or the fate of unrecognized talent, but by its very nature, it should express something.  Mahler returns to the theme in later works, so it must have had more meaning for him than Gerhaher and Huber brought to it on this occasion. Possibly Gerhaher wasn't well as he mopped his brow a lot, which is perfectly acceptable, especially at this time of the year. But no matter how beautiful a singer's instrument might be, artistry resides in the way it is played. To paraphrase Mahler himself, "the music lies not in the notes" but in the communication of ideas.

Kindertotenlieder marks a transition in Mahler's music leading away from the world of Wunderhorn towards more conceptual horizons. In many ways, this group of songs resembles a five-movement symphony, integrated by recurring motifs of dark and light,  rising to a transcendent finale, where the storm is vanquished, and the children "vom Gottes Hand bedeckt". In its own way not so very different from the redemption and transfiguration that marks works like Das Lied von der Erde. To reach this resolution, however, the poet has had to undergo extreme desolation.  Friedrich Rückert knew about death and anguish. In "Wenn dein Mütterlein" , he refers to gazing, not at the mother's face, but closer to the ground, where children should be. It's detail that could probably come only from lived experience. Dignity is in order, and restraint, but emotional truth is of the essence. As Tannhäuser might have said, good singing isn't everything.

 For an encore, Gerhaer and Huber offered a piano version of Urlicht from Mahler's Symphony no 2.  "Der Mensch liegt in größter Pein!" .He is so rejected that even the angels want to turn him away. but that only strengthens his resolve. "Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!". At last, Gerhaher's voice took on more colour and more definition. An excellent encore. If only the rest of the recital had been as good.

photo credit : Simon  Jay Price

Thomas Hampson Mahler Wigmore Hall

Thomas Hampson "lives" Mahler. He's the greatest Mahler singer of our time, and a serious Mahler scholar as well. You could almost say that what Hampson doesn't know about Mahler might not be worth knowing, but he still finds something fresh and new. So, even after all these years, it was good to hear Hampson and Wolfram Rieger perform Mahler at the Wigmore Hall.

Hampson and long-term collaborator Rieger began at the beginning, with some of Mahler's earliest songs such as Scheiden und Meiden and Aus! Aus! from around 1888. They are significant because they represent Mahler's earliest engagement with Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the collection of folk-derived poems published by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in 1806/8.  Their appeal to Mahler is obvious. He grew up in a small town with a military garrison. From childhood, he would have recognized the sound of marches and military bands and connected emotionally to the lives of soldiers, and to the simple townsfolk and huntsmen around him. Death was no stranger to Mahler even as a child. Indeed, his fascination with marches, funeral marches and resurrection stemmed from very deep sources in his psyche

Hampson has spoken out against war and gave a remarkable recital in which the Wunderhorn songs were perceptively presented by theme rather than as they appear in publication. Hampson called the Wunderhorn songs "negative love songs" for their protagonists retain sturdy defiance in adverse situations. Lied des Verfolgten im Turm (1898) refers to the picture by Moritz von Schwind. A man is imprisoned in a tower. Meanwhile a row of elves are busily trying to saw down the bars on the window to help him escape. "Gedanken sind Frei", Hampson cries. Thoughts are free. As long as we can dream, we cannot be suppressed. Even now, that's a revolutionary concept.
 
Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz, with its march rhythm just slightly off-beat, resolves in an evocation of trumpets and drums. The symphonist in Mahler was never far away, even when he was writing piano song. Revelge, that most nightmarish of songs is a masterpiece. If Hampson's voice wasn't, on this occasion, as rich and fluid as it can be, Rieger's playing was manic, horrific. Rieger's staccato ripped like a volley of machine-gun fire. As Hampson notes, the music evokes"Drang", the Grim Reaper gone mad. With our modern ears, it's like a forewarning of the slaughter of the trenches, and worse.."Tralali, tralaley, tralalera" is no lullaby here, but a bitter protest.

Although Alma would ridicule Alexander von Zemlinsky in her memoirs, the truth is more complex.  Zemlinsky knew Alma's songs years before they reached publication. Even though he was infatuated, he told her that her music was, like herself, "a warm, feminine sensitive opening but then of doodles, flourishes, unstylish passage work. Olbrich [a publisher] should have your songs performed by an artiste from the Barnum and Bailey (circus) company, wearing the customary black tails, and on his head, a dunce's cap". It is significant that Alma's songs are orchestrated frequently by other composers, who want them to be more than they are.

The connections between Mahler, Zemlinsky, Strauss, Dehmel, Schoenberg and Webern are so well known they don't need explanation. Hampson sang Zemlinksy's Enbeitung, Alma's Die stille Nacht.and three settings of Dehmel, two by Webern (Aufblick and Tief von fern, both 1901-4) and one by Strauss (Befreit, op 39/4 1898). In Befreit, the round vowel sounds resonated with warmth. "O Glück !" he sang, rising to a glowing crescendo. His family and friends were in the audience. Hampson's feelings were touchingly sincere, though the poem itself is more equivocal.

The highlight of the evening was Schoenberg's Erwartung op 2/1 1899), which pre-dates the monodrama op 17 (1909), and even Schoenberg's meeting with Marie Pappenheim. The dedicatee was Zemlinsky, and the text by Richard Dehmel. It's a cryptic poem where images are reversed. "Aus der meergrünen Tieche....schient der Mond". A woman's face appears under the water. A man throws a ring into the pond. Three opals sparkle. He kisses them, and in the sea-green depths "Ein Fenster tut sich auf". Hampson sang, floating the words with eerie stillness. Then the punchline: "Aus der roten Villa neben den der toten Eiche" with which the poem began, a woman's pale hand waves. Rieger played the circular figures so they felt obsessive, as if trapped in an endless mad dance. The similarities with the later Erwartung are obvious, but the song is fin-de- siècle symbolism and very early Expressionism rather than psychosis. In retrospect, it might seem eerily prophetic of the relationships between Mathilde Zemlinsky and Richard Gerstl, or indeed, Alma and Gropius.

Mahler's Rückert-Lieder are so well known now that it's sometimes forgotten - though not by Hampson - that they were originally published together with the Wunderhorn songs Revelge and Der Tambourg'sell. which weren't included with the first Wunderhorn collections. In 1993, Hampson recorded an interesting collection of Wunderhorn-themed songs with Geoffrey Parsons, which included piano song versions of Urlicht and Es Sungen drei Engeln. This time, with Rieger at the Wigmore Hall, he separated the first four Rückert-Lieder with a Wunderhorn song (Erinnerung) and sang Liebst du um Schönheit as a finale, intensifying the underlying theme of the recital. "It's a postcard", said Hampson, "a message of love". "If you love for beauty, youth or riches" runs the poem, "Do not love me. But if you love for the sake of love, Dich lieb' ich immerdar". The most beautiful, most tender song of the evening, straight from the heart.

A full version of this appears in Opera Today

Anna Prohaska - Wigmore Hall

Anna Prohaska gave a good debut recital tonight at the Wigmore Hall, even though she clearly wasn't well, and had cancelled a concert in Berlin earlier this week. "But this the Wigmore Hall!" she said. "The Temple of art song!". Besides, she added, friends and family had travelled to London from all over Europe to support her. "They'd assassinate me if I cancelled", she added.

All singers get sick, many risk their voices to carry on regardless. but few are so candid and charming about it. Anyone can sing, but only the really great can communicate this eloquently even before singing a note. Prohaska has star quality because she can captivate an audience and involve them in what she's doing. The mark, I think, of  someone born for the stage. As we already know from hearing her vivacious Zerlina at La Scala lasr year (read about that here)

Few singers would dare essay Prohaska's ambitious programme for the Wigmore Hall. A daring range of styles. Debussy, Fauré, Wolf, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Haydn, Mahler, John Dowland and Henry Lawes, Arthur Honegger, Karol Szymanowski and, to cap it all Dvořák's Song of the Moon from Rusalka. Because she wasn't well, you could hear the strain, but Prohaska's professionalism won through. She can pace herself for the fiendishly difficult rhythms in two of Szymanowski's Songs of a Fairy Princess, (read here), with their exotic ululations, while resting (somewhat) in the gentler Dowland and Lawes.This programme would tax the finest and the most experienced, so it's to Prohaska's credit that she tried it at all. Eric Schneider, Matthias Goerne's regular partner, supported her well.

But the programme wasn't just a vehicle for Prohaska's talents. It served an important artistic purpose. Its title was "Song of the Sirens", songs about water spirits and seductresses associated with water and the sea. (read more about what I've written on the subject HERE and other posts on Schubert and Wolf). It's quite an achievement on its own terms - whoever devised this programme knows their repertoire well.  By no means all obvious or popular songs, but a treasure for repertoire buffs like me. Prohaska should keep this programme for the future because it's exceptionally rewarding and would make an unmissable debut CD. EXTRA ! I guessed right. She already has made a CD of these songs for Deutsche Grammophon. Must get !
Photo: Monika Rittershaus, Askonas Holt.

You can hear whole concerts on the Berliner Philharmoniker site where Anna Prohaska sings with Claudio Abbado conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. But I thought, instead, honour where she gets some of her genes from, her grandfather Felix Prohaska. Below, he's conducting Alfred Poell and the Vienna Staatsoper Orchestra  in Mahler in 1950. This is one of the landmark performances, which everyone interested in Mahler song needs to know, still one of the best despite 60 years of competition.

Thomas Hampson NEW Mahler Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn changed my life. Back in 1968, I heard the Fischer-Dieskau and Schwarzkopf version. I knew nothing about composer, genre, language or even western culture but I knew it was something I could not shake. Thomas Hampson's lived with Mahler and DKW just as long. Although he's grown older, if anything it's enhanced his depth of emotional engagement. He is the foremost Mahler singer of our time. This new recording is special because it reflects geunine Mahler scholarship, which Hampson has supported all his life.

The Fischer-Dieskau/Schwarzkopf recording was popular because it treated the songs like an extended  duet between two "characters". I've still got nostalgic feelings for it, but forty years of reasoned research into Mahler's practices have restored the songs to their original function, as commentaries on different and more universal human situations. Not an "act".  Even Das himmlische Leben and Urlicht, marked for female voice in their repective symphonies, can be transposed for baritone, as Hampson demonstrates. Hampson brings an extraordinary new depth to these songs. His voice may not be as lithe as it was when he was singing with Bernstein, but he's developed so much  that there really isn't any competition with the past. There's also no comparson with the  recording of Wunderhorn songs with Geoffrey Parsons. This more mature Hampson is singing with  the emotional power that comes from having fully experienced life. Incredibly well-judged phrasing, well-defined nuances, elegance, dignity and committment.

It helps greatly that Hampson is supported by the Wiener Virtuosen who play with exquisite clarity, so they create the "Kammermusikton" Mahler was so desperate to achieve.  As Hampson and Renate Stark-Voit (who's dedicated her life to Mahler research) say in their notes, Mahler wanted to create "a contrast between the lean-toned, chamber-like textures of the strings and the relatively lavish scoring for the winds and percussion....in this way the relative weightings of the instruments grouped around the singer achieve an altogether merciless transparency".

Merciless is the operative work. Bucolic as the Wunderhorn source poems may seem, emotionally they're sophisticated, not sentimental. Mahler had no qualms about changing the texts to sharpen meaning. He's not "setting" text but using it as a tool. Hence the unfussy, musically alert assertiveness of Hampson's singing, which works with the orchestra in equal dialogue. These songs aren't "voice with accompaniment" so much as miniature symphonies, where voice and instruments operate together. "A Kaleidoscope" as Hampson says in his Youtube promotion.

Meaning, too, is a Hampson speciality. Not for him the published order of the songs, which reflect nothing as the songs were composed separately over ten years. Instead he orders them by theme, linking Das irdische Leben with Das himmlische Leben and ending with Urlicht. The sequence brings out deep meaning. A child is starved and dies. Another child has reached heaven where no-one will starve because they believe. (Please read my post Why greedy kids in Mahler 4)  Starvation is a metaphor for faith, fortitude in times of struggle. It could be an image of an artist who doesn't get recognition on earth, but might in future. "My time will come" as Mahler said. But Urlicht anchors the theme firmly on a spiritual plane. The believer is so certain of what he needs that even an angel cannot change his path. Ich bin von Goot,  underr weider zu Gott! And listen to the punchline, where Mahler refers to light, illuminating the way to another state of life. Light and darkness, directional thrust, all ideas that pervade Mahler's work throughout.With this superb recording, you'll hear why the fashion for Mahlerkugeln isn't Mahler. (see also my post on Hampson's DKW DVD)