Will the Edinburgh Festival outshine the BBC Proms this year? Serious competition, even though lots of Edinburgh will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 so no-one need miss out.
Big international bands! Kent Nagano conducts the lively Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in two very interesting programmes. Jonathan Nott conducts the unique Bamberg Orchestra, and Charles Dutoit conducts the Philadeplhia Orchestra in two relatively straightforward programmes. Myung-whun Chung brings the Soeul Philharmonic for their Edinburgh debut. In Korea, they take western classical music extremely seriously, so expect world class standards. The Philharmonia London (Salonen), The BBC Scottish Orchestra (Runnicles, Volkov), The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Jurowski), the superlative Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Volkov, Ticciati, Norrington) lead the local contingent. In football this would be pretty close to Premier League (Premier League being Berlin, Lucerne and Vienna).
Then look at the repertoire! Big starter is Schumann Das Paradies und die Peri with Roger Norrington who brought the piece back into the repertoire. The first time I heard him conduct it (1998) he had to explain it to the sudience, it was so "new". It will be wonderful to hear what he does with it after all these years Nagano's programmes are adventurous - Takemitsu and Unsuk Chin and Waltraud Meier no less, singing Mahler. Myung-whun Chung is conducting Messiaen, in which he's a force of nature.
Edinburgh are using the image of a green chrysanthemum (one of my favourite flowers) to emphasize that there'll be lots of non-western music in the 2011 Festival. Takemitsu, Hosokawa, Dai Fujikura, Unsuk Chin, all leading lights of modern music who happen to be Japanese or Korean. Even the Arditti Quartet is in on the act, though they've been playing these composers long before anyone else. Chinese musicians too, like Yundi Li, much underrated because Lang Lang grabs the limelight, and Xuefei Yang, the guitarist, and the T'ang Quartet. Note they're all playing modern works, not traditional folk music. Modern East Asian music has a tradition completely of its own, which exists in parallel with a resurgence in traditional forms.
Asia is so huge that it really can't be spoken of as one unit, anymore than you might link the Lapps of Finland to the musicians of the Cape Verde Islands. But it's time we recognised the confluence of western and non-western music. Messaien, Debussy, Ravel, all influenced by non-western worlds. Hence the Jogyakarta Gamelan Orchestra. Gamelan captivated audiences at the 1870 World's Fair in Paris. It's influence is huge - Debussy, Messiaen, Bartok, Colin McPhee, etc. We wouldn't have nearly as much music for percussion without gamelan. Colonialism should be as dead in music as it is in politics (where unfortunately it still exists).
Impressive opera at Edinburgh this year too, and international, too. Jont productions are a good thing as they spread costs and make adventurous fare economically feasible., From Flanders comes the Vlaamse Opera with Rossini Semiramide,. René Jacobs conducts the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in Haydn's Orlando Paladino (look at the singers!). Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Massenet's Thaïs. Again western fascination with non western themes, going a long way back. The "Chinese" opera here is a modern hybrid, a reworking of Hamlet, The Prince of Zhi Dan. It's by the Shanghai Beijing Opera Troupe. Beijing and Shanghai opera are quite different so I think this must just be Beijing opera done in Shanghai. Might be interesting, though there is a major traditional kunqu (southern, lyrical) opera Jade Hairpin in Amsterdam in June.
Even more interesting might be King Lear adapted, directed and performed by Wu Hsing-kuo and the Contemporary Legend Theatre. "Delivering a one man tour de force, Wu Hsing-kuo simultaneously depicts multiple characters, from the maniacal Lear and his ally Gloucester, to his evil, grasping daughters and the pitiful, lonely Fool. Further pushing the boundaries of traditional theatrical convention, he also appears as himself, exploring his own identity as an actor in relation to the fictional characters he portrays." goes the blurb. This sounds good as Wu is approaching the universal theme with fresh ideas, rather than doing a pastiche. Could well be the sleeper hit of the whole Festival. HERE is a linik to his 2007 performance of Lear in New York.
Lots of good recitals - Matila, Kozena, Damrau, Keenlyside, Kirchschlager etc most of which we can hear in London at the Wigmore Hall anytime. More of a surprise might be Julian Prégardien, son of Christoph. They're doing a two tenor, father and son recital, which should be interesting. Luckily, that is being broadcast so we won't miss out.
What will the BBC Proms 2011 have to offer? Hold your breath a little longer....
This is the recording which features Laci Boldemann's 4 Epitaphs, which so stunned audiences at Anne Sofie von Otter's recital at the Wigmore Hall in 2003. The 4 Epitaphs are based on Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915). That too is a remarkable work. Masters writes fictional epitaphs, each of which tells the story of the person supposedly buried beneath. Ollie McGee denounces her abusive husband. "In death, I am avenged". Sarah Brown tells her lover to tell her husband "There is no marriage in Heaven. But there is love".
Each of these miniatures is so intense that the "personalities" come alive. Laci Boldemann's settings are similarly terse and direct. He gets straight to the point, expressing the "person" by inflections in phrasing and syntax, rather than through ornamentation. The songs feel like speech, just as you'd expect from gritty pioneer folk who don't mince words. The songs are scored for string orchestra, with textures clean and free, evoking wide open spaces perhaps, or the other plane that is death. Amazing songs! A pity we had to wait til 2009 for their release. Anne Sofie von Otter's delivery is perfectly judged, dignified and unsentimental.
A pity, too, that Boldemann set only four of Masters's 244 vignettes. But in a way that clarity illuminates them. Boldemann was an interesting man. His parents were relatives of Aino Sibelius, and they hung out in artistic and music circles in Finland, Germany and Sweden. Nonetheless, Boldemann (1921-69) was drafted into the German Army but luckily became a POW, and spent time in the US. One day perhaps we'll hear programmes with his chamber music and these wonderful songs. I've found THIS but no other details.
Another discovery on this CD ( from DG) is Hans Gefors (b 1952) Lydias sånger. (rev 2003) It's an ambitious cycle, giving von Otter no respite : she has to sing against the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra for half and hour without a break. Fortunately Kent Nagano conducts with sparse elegance. This is a saga-like dramatic narrative, so the range is demanding, too. The piece is loosely based on Hjalmar Söderberg's novel A Serious Game recounting an affair between a married woman and a music critic, so references to music and literature abound. Texts include Heine, Michelangelo and Bizet's Carmen. Gefors's setting are free enough that his work doesn't feel like an adaptation, but rather a series of mood pieces that create an ambience that may reflect the feelings in the novel rather than literal events. Some gems here, like The Sphinx , an unusual Heine poem that's defied most composers. Gefors captures the enigma. O schöne Sphinx! O löse mir Das Rätsel, das wunderbare!
Another world premiere starts the CD : Anders Hillborg, .....lontana in sonno....(2003) It's atmospheric, and von Otter sings the discursive phrases with sensitivity, matched by Nagano's restraint.
The Gefors and Hillborg pieces were commissioned for Anne Sofie von Otter. She's a wonderful singer, but eventually all singers retire. Hopefully, she'll be with us a long, long time. But she has done so much for unusual and new repertoire, and for Scandinavian music in particular, that her legacy will be greater and more lasting even than her singing. Twenty years ago, there were people who didn't know the songs of Grieg or Sibelius, far less Petersen-Berger or Stenhammer or Boldemann, and big names like Fischer-Dieskau didn't sing them. (Schwarzkopf did, and loved Luonnotar) Partly this is because an inordinate number of these songs are written for female voice - I don't know why. But von Otter has brought them out into the mainstream, where they belong, alongside the great German and French classics.
In the early 90's Decca did a series of recordings of Entartete Musik, music suppressed by the Nazi regime. It was an act of great commercial foresight because at the time much of this music wasn't known outside specialist circles. The Decca series, created by Dr Albrecht Dümling, was truly visionary, extremely well curated, and the performances often so good they remain classics even now the genre is pretty much mainstream. This series is the benchmark by which all else is measured. Probably there won't be another series of this breadth and quality.
Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten was part of the series, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Radio Symphony who were behind many of the recordings. Entartete Musik was cherished in East Germany, where there was a performance tradition. On one disc there's Matthias Goerne, barely out of his teens. Worthy as that recording is, it's outclassed by the performance in Salzburg in 2005, when Peter Ruzicka was director. So a visionary performance, unmissable for anyone, interested in the genre or not. This puts Die Gezeichneten firmly in the mainstram repertoire.
The Salzburg production is so good that topping it will be a challenge no one has yet dared attempt. It was conducted by Kent Nagano, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (where many East Berliners went to). The cast is absolutely top notch : Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Wolfgang Schöne and Robert Brubaker in what must be the ultimate performance of his career. The director was Nikolaus Lehnhoff.
Lehnhoff's penchant for massive constructions works wonderfully to express the meaning of the opera. The stage at first looks like it's strewn with formidable boulders. Alviano Salvago has built Elysium, a secret world on a remote island off Genoa. These boulders are like the bastions of a frightening fortress, which is what Elysium really is, despite being dedicated to art, love and beauty. There are prisoners here, and unspeakable crimes which don't get revealed until the end. Salvago himself is a fortress. He's a hunchback, "the ugliest man in Genoa", crippled by self-loathing. He's built Elysium as an escape. It's so perfect that it makes everything beautiful. It's used by aristocrats for exquisite orgies, in which Salvago himself doesn't participate despite the magical aura which makes hideousness beautiful.
As the lovely Overture unfolds, Brubaker is carefully putting on elaborate makeup. He's dressed in a flimsy negligee. but his cropped hair and butch features make him look like a caricature drag queen. Immediately, the staging and acting conncet to the idea of psychic dissonance that is so much the soul of this opera. The boulders on stage are formed by a giant statue of a woman, but a statue collapsed and destroyed, only one arm, on hand still raised in a futile gesture to heaven. Most of the action in the opera unfolds on the statue's body, so watch carefully how the body becomes part of the action. Sometimes its rounded curves nurture, sometimes they allow a place to hide, but they remain opaque, inpenetrable, unlike the island's victims. The stage too extends to the walls around the auditorium, arches representing the many secret rooms in the grotto, yet also look sinister, like catacombs. The statue does not foretell the ending. It's clear in the music and text all along that Elysium is an unsustainable delusion in the first place, and Salvago is not deluded. This is important because there are moral and social values in this opera. Elysium is a prototype of an ideal society, corrupted by people who don't have ideals.
Salvago announces he's giving Elysium away to the City of Genoa. An altruistic act, perhaps, but Salvago knows that the girls used in the orgies were kidnapped from the town. Schreker's dwarf is an altogether more complex person than any of Zemlinsky's. Zemlinsky's dwarves fall in love with beauties, but accept their rejection on a relatively straightforward fairy tale level. Schreker's Salavgo (note the name) is so screwed up he doesn't dare look beyond himself and or even conceive of love. Fortress Elysium blocks out vulnerable feelings.
Schreker's drama is more than fairy tale in other ways. Listen to the way Anne Schwanewilms creates Carlotta Nardi, the wayward daughter of the Podestà (Wolfgang Schöne). She's a liberated woman, an artist who doesn't follow rules, the personification of Der ferne Klang, the elusive melody in physical form. She paints souls. Listen to that wonderful passage where she sings about her dream. She sees a "small wretched wanderer" walk into the sunlight, and a miracle happens - he grows larger and larger. "So male ich eure Gestalt, Signor Alviano". Watch Brubaker's face twitch. This is truly masterful acting. He's pouring out a flood of dammed up emotions, too powerful for Salvago to contain. Then she says, she still needs to see "trunkene Auge, darin all die Schoenheit sich gespeigelt".
This line is critical. Can Salvago give her the "drunken eye" that mirrors beauty ? Brubaker pulls his butch black overcoat on again, hiding his soft pink negligee, and for a moment stands alone on the harsh boulders. The scene ends with poignant strings, the film projecting the statue's blind stone eyes.
Salvago's mirror image twin is Graf Vitelozzo Tamare, given a tour de force performance by Michael Volle, another high point in his career he deserves to be very proud of. Tamare is handsome, tall, virile. What body language! Yet listen to the music behind his description of Elysium, and its "Ein künstliche Grotto auf jenem Eiland", the Eiland soaring, swelling lyrically. So it makes sense that Tamare, Alpha male that he is, unlke the other men, the one who discovers love. "There are men who see only the light, and darkness "ist ihrem Fremd". Since he's set eyes on the Carlotta with her mysterious, challenging smile, no longer can he be careless and uncaring, no longer can he be the prankster hero he used to be. Think Tristan. Pity Volle isn't a tenor. Listen to the way Schreker builds echoes of horn calls into the music, as if he did hear the parallels. But it's distinctively Schreker's voice, "Ferne Musik und leise Gesänge" further invoked in the orchestral interlude that follows, where Lehnhoff has Schwanewilms start to seduce Brubaker.
Both Schwanewilms and Brubaker are encased in transparent black chiffon on naked flesh. When Schwanewilms talks off Brubaker's hard, heavy boots it's erotic and yet extremely tender. Watch Brubaker's expressions carefully as he doesn't have much to sing but his reactions are extremely important - thank goodness for close-ups in film! Yet seduction is just a simile for deeper intimacy. Carlotta sings of going out on s a sunny day, feeling sad without knowing why. Salvago realises someone has at last broken down his emotional walls. But that means he has to learn to give tenderness in return, for she, too is "ein gar gebrechliches Spielzug" She pulls off his pink dress, exposing him, but that's it.
The most striking scenes in this production occurs as the interlude is played. Suddenly the auditorium is bathed in blue light, a reference to the light that makes the Grotto magic. The arches around the stage light up, and figures appear, in black capes. These reference the men of Genoa in their black, beetle-like attire and also longer dramatic traditions. Carlotta's sensitivity is up against something too hard and too ingrained in society for her and Salvago to stand up to. Figures like vultures encroach on the stage as the Duke, representing power, persuades Carlotta that Salvago isn't the man for her. Eventually, it's Tamare she succumbs to, not unwillingly.
These groups of elegant but sinister figures, sexually ambiguous, with masks and feathered headresses, are Lehnhoff trademarks, but here wonderfully evoke things that can't rationally be expressed - mystery, evil, death, power, perhap ? They prepare us for the terrible trial scene when Duke Adorno and the Council of Eight denounce Salvago, blaming him for kidnapping and corrupting the girls of Genoa. It's a horrifying moment. Salvago squirms, helpless. The aristocrats who used Elysium are rounding on him for trying to end it. He must take the blame so they won't. And he is to blame, even though he never laid a finger on anyone. His crime was trying to upset the natural order of things where beauty is beauty and ugliness ugliness. Salvago's attempts to end the orgies on the island by giving it to the city are cruelly punished. Perhaps real ugliness is so powerful that dreams like Elysium can't possibly work and Salvagos are destined to fail. And the rescued girls themselves blame him, for it was in his Elysium they were corrupted.
Then in the final interlude, the ground itself opens up, as Elysium is destroyed, revealing lots of children, half naked, some dead, their haunted eyes captured more accusingly on film than you'd ever see in the opera house. It's horrible. In a corner, Carlotta and Tamare lie together as if dead. Then Volle sings. Even if he's killed, it won't change the fact he's had the most blissful moment of his life. "Die Schönheit sei Beute das Starken". In their final confrontation, Tamare tells Salvago in no uncertain terms why he's failed. "Du sahst nur das Dunkle, die Scahtten, Gefahr und Sünde". What's worse, "ein freudlos Leben, ein langsam Seichen, oder ein Tod in Rausch und Verklärung rauscher in brünstg’r Unarmung ein selig Sterben!". A death in rapture and transfiguration? Carlotta found the ecstasy, the "drunken eyes" she dreamed of so she died happy. Definitely, Tristan und Isolde, with a dash of Tannhauser.
But this is Schreker. Tamare recounts a tale about killing a funfair fiddler with his own violin. Carlotta awakes from her swoon and screams at Salvago in revulsion . "Gebt mir Wasser" she cries, "Nein, gebt mir Wein!" Salvago crumples into a ball as the music explodes into conflagration.
Often the more you love something, the harder it is to write about it, because it's sort of disappointing to dash off something superficial. Maybe one day I'll finally get around to setting out the critique of Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch I've been making notes on for years. But with a new production of Tristan und Isolde coming up at the Royal Opera House it's a good time to be thinking about the ideas in Die Gezeichneten. Get the DVD, because this production was fantastically expensive to mount and was designed for the specifics of the Felsenreitschule and could never be quite the same again. PLEASE see my other posts on Franz Schreker, use the search button or labels on right.
Please read this article "Why I am sorely disillusioned by Gergiev" on the blog On an overgrown Path which you can click on via the link on the right of this page (further down). Now this is intelligent, analytical, well reasoned writing by someone who knows what he is talking about. Personally I couldn't care less about Gergiev's politics but they are symptomatic of G's approach to music. I love a lot of Gergiev's work, even when he's crass. But the scary thing is that his new popularity demonstrates something even more scary in this superficial soundbite era of "instant" thrills. People no longer seem to value listening, learning, thinking. Read Overgrown Path, it is what seriously good blogging can be. I wish I could write as well as that.
La Transfigur ation de Notre- Seigneur Jésus-Christ is one of the key works of Messiaen’s whole output. It describes nothing less than the transfiguration of Jesus into God. It’s a miracle, so miraculous music is quite in order. Kent Nagano worked closely with Messiaen, and is one of his great interpreters. Therefore this concert ought to have been sold out. Unfortunately, La Transfiguration received a very dull performance at the Proms which may have put people off. No comparison between the turgid Prom and this performance. This shone ! A two hour concert without an interval might seem hard to take, but time flashed past with Nagano’s electric, inspired delivery. Seldom has a case been so clearly made for idiomatic interpretation, by musicians who understand what they are doing.
Nagano realizes that, despite the Catholic liturgy, Messiaen’s music is all-embracing, recognizing the value in all cultures. Knowing something about the theology helps on finer points of detail, but essentially, all you really need to know to “get” Messiaen is to share his heterodox vision of the world, where all things rejoice in the glory of life. It’s probably easier for a Kathak drummer or Turkish dervish to understand him than some po-faced fundamentalist. Early Christian saints had much in common with other religions : think of medieval sculpture and painting where saints glow with otherworldy joy. What Nagano brought out in this performance was Messiaen’s uninhibited freedom of spirit. Despite the Latin text and references to the Mass, what made this performance so good was its vibrant liveliness. The idea of man made God “is” exciting whatever flavour your beliefs may be.
Nagano also had the advantage of musicians able to adapt to Messiaen’s unusual idiom. The BBC Symphony Chorus and the Philharmonia Voices showed they could “swing” with the right heady wildness while being so precise that all two hundred voices held together with clarity. Again, this looseness doesn’t come easily to classically trained musicians. That’s why I was so surprised when, again at this year’s Prom, Simon Rattle achieved the feat of making the Berlin Philharmoniker jive. (See reviews in the archive from the list on the right) I dislike his recording of the Turangalîla-symphonie with CBSO, so I really wasn't expecting much. But what he did with the Berliners was in a completely different league. The secret was that the Berliners were playing with the idiosyncratic vitality Messiaen needs above all. That combined with their ability topo play the mosr vivid colours made it wonderful. (Colour is as important in Messiaen as structure). Nagano did much the same with the even larger forces La Transfiguration requires.
La Transfiguration is configured in two Septénaires, two sections each with seven parts. The piece moves forward not through ordinary thematic development but rather as a procession of units marking each stage of the narrative. Thus section 3, Christus Jésus splendour Patris marks a new phase in the progress, opening wide vistas of sound : the choirs seem to explode in glory. “Your lightnings lit up the world, the earth trembled and shook”, they sing in endless variation. No holds barred, this is shock and awe made sound. In the 5th part, Quam dilecta tabernaculatua, Nagano shows how Messiaen writes angular blocks of sound like massed ostinato, yet animated with a strange wavy rhythm. Within this is embedded a glorious cello solo, here played by Karen Stephenson. Her beautiful playing adds another smaller, but vital element to the cross currents of texture. The whole orchestra seems to be swaying together, in perfect unison, for this is a part of the “procession”. Messiaen has two percussion soloists at the front, whose role is much the same as if they were leading a marching band.
The Second Septénaire is even more glorious than the first. The textures here are even more complex, the central core being more dominant, the wavering rhythms now like shards of light radiating outwards into space. After all, God has suddenly appeared in the heavens, announcing that Jesus is his son “in whom I am well pleased”. On the final “ipsum audite” choir and orchestra seem to explode, the darker brass booming like fog horns. Then in the 9th section, Messiaen uses individual solo voices, the embodiment of “man”, before returning to the climactic roar that is God. Exquisitely beautiful committed singing from these voices, heard cleanly and crisply above the tumult.
Nagano also knows the importance of the silences that mark transitions in the form of the music. For example, he respects the silences between the 10th , 11th and 12th sections which mark the differing foci and also the sense of ceremonial procession. At the Proms these silences were interrupted by radio broadcasts, showing how little their function was understood. The 12th section opens with a single phrase “Clothed with light as with a robe” a reference to Jesus appearing to his disciples shining with light. We’ve all seen this in Bible pictures, but rarely made as “real” as in Messiaen’s music. The vocal line becomes highly decorated. Then, Gloria in excelcis Deo, almost hysterical with bliss. Nagano makes the up and down pulse in the orchestra, indicated barely restrained excitement. All nature is singing here, Greek metres and Hindu talas, birds and musicians. The final two sections extend the sense of epiphany, outburst of pure ecstasy and transcendant bliss.
This concert was also a reminder of just how much Messiaen has influenced conducting practice. Music like this cannot afford to be handled without precision and clarity of purpose. Muddy performance dims the light infused detail. Like so many others who worked with Messiaen (Boulez, Myun-whun Chung, Benjamin) Nagano’s conducting persona has been defined by a clear sense of how music works on its own terms. There’s no need for extraneous flashiness. It’s all in the music for those who can find it. Photo of Nagano with suitably colourful background is credit Nicolas Ruel.
