Insights into Schreker's compositional processes

Franz Schreker Orchestral Works, from SWR with Christopher Ward conducting the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, new from Capriccio, continuing their Schreker series, which has so far covered the early operas and a good recording of Der Geburtstag der Infantin and Das Weib des Intaphernes. The disc includes important though less well known works like the Vorspeil zu einer grossen Oper “Memnon”, the mini-song symphony Vom Ewigen Liebe and the short but significant Vier kleine Stucke fur grosses Orchester. Together this collection forms a study of Schreker's compositional development, making this recording far more valuable than many, for anyone seriously interested in the composer and his time.


Ekkehard, Schreker's op 12 from 1902-3 is a symphonic overture. That no opera eventuated hardly matters : it's a tone poem on an operatic subject, a hybrid not unlike Richard Strauss's Don Juan, from the same period, though Schreker's individuality is detectable even at this early stage in his career. Based on a novel popular in the mid 19th century, Ekkehard tells the story of a 10th century monk from St Gallen, who is brought from his monastery as a teacher for a duchess, but falls passionately in love with her. Thus the grand opening chords, horn calls evoking the grandeur of the vision ahead. This theme alternates with a quieter motif which might represent the monk, or his awe at arriving at the palace. Thunderous timpani, crashing cymbals, brass fanfares remind us that the splendour the monk sees around him is built upon military might. A passage for organ, reflecting Ekkehard's true background, is soon overwhelmed by a fierce march, possibly a march into battle. Ekkehard's infatuation is doomed. The overture draws to a close with sadder, darker motifs as Ekkehard returns once more to the mountains. This overture deals with ideas that Schreker would go on to develop with greater sophistication in Der Geburtstag der Infantin and even in Die Gezeichneten : the use of medievalism as cover for modern concerns, the concept that true art isn't based on mass values and above all the contrast between exterior beauty and inner corruption.

The Phantastische Ouverture op 15 (1904) shows how Schreker, in his mid-twenties, was seeking orchestral possibilities from the starting point of drama. There is no programme to this overture. The opening motifs are drawn with ominous power, soon undercut by fast moving, fragmentary figures which hurtle forwards. A new motif emerges, also animated but more sustained, sweeping confidently to the conclusion, where bell-like peals herald exuberant chords.

With Vom ewigen Leben, Schreker has proceeded to different territory. This started as two songs for voice and piano, completed in 1922. Five years later, Schreker orchestrated them into a coherent whole. The texts come from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, used in German translation. The first section, "Wurzeln und Halme sind dies nur" is delicate, silvery percussion mirroring the soprano's high timbre, complemented by strings and restrained woodwinds. The silvery textures blend into the woodwinds of the second part, "Das Gras", where flutes and clarinets circle the soprano (Valda Wilson). This section is nearly three times as long as the first, with extended orchestral interludes. The sophistication of the orchestral writing makes this a true “orchestral art song” much greater than the sum of its parts.

Cinema was the new art form of the 20th century, growing from drama, opera and music. It was as if Wagner's concept of Gesammstkunstwerk had been made possible by new technology. The connections between music and film were clear. Silent films were accompanied by live performance. Many early art films, such as Berlin Symphony of a Great City (1927) used a musical framework on which to pin a non- narrative, semi-symphonic structure. Berlin was one of the most important centres of art film, where masterpieces like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1921) were produced. It was natural that creative artists like Schreker would have recognized the connection between film and music . Like Alban Berg and others, Schreker understood the potential of cinema, and the significance of new sound technology. Indeed, Schreker and Schoenberg were in regular contact on the subject of music and film, and in January 1929, Schreker, a Director of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, became responsible for the music section of the new German Society for Sound and Vision. Hanns Eisler, Schreker's contemporary, wrote the first major theoretical work on music for film, and made a good living writing film music without sacrificing art.

Schreker's Vier kleine Stücke fur grosses Orchester (Four little sketches for large orchestra) (1930) is therefore a response by the composer to a new genre, not much different to the way he wrote overtures as experiments for opera. They should not be dismissed as “late works” simply because the composer died three years later, but as the work of a composer still brave enough to explore. Turning to film was not a diminution of his powers but rather a continuation of what he'd done before, but in a new direction.

Schreker's Vier kleine Stucke fur grosses Orchester demonstrates the way in which music could be used to advance drama and work with visuals. Each of these sketches is short but vivid, evoking a mood or emotion to intensify the images shown on screen. Dialogue in silent films was limited, for obvious reasons reduced to minimal intertitles, and voice technology still fairly primitive that “talkies” killed many silent actors, and early film music largely songs and interludes. Timoroso (marked zugend) is not timid so much as tentative, a curtain raiser promising wonders to come. Violente (marked hestig, ungestum) is flamboyant, its zig zag rhythms exotic, setting the scene for “oriental” adventure films so popular at the time. Incalzando (marked Eindringlich) casts haunting mystery, with lines that could adapt to a variety of situations where characters might need to pause for thought. Gradevole (marked Gefallig) alternates dance-like energy with serenity, which again could be adapted to different scenes. Emphatic timpani !

Just as Schreker's Vorspeil zu einer Drama (1913) led to Die Gezeichneten, the Vorspeil zu einer Grossen Oper (Memnon) (1933), Schreker's last completed work, might have been a working model for a truly “grand” opera. We shall never know. In Greek mythology, Memnon was a great warrior, a god king from Ethiopia (ie an outsider like so many Schreker heroes) who came to the aid of others but was killed. Thus exotic sounds, woodwinds imitating Arabic pipes set the scene, strings weaving sensually above a steady pulse which may suggest the tread of a camel caravan. The pace is broken by dissonant chords, ushering cross-currents of sound weaving in different directions. Dramatic, yet disturbing. Though harps introduce a calmer but still oriental mood. The “caravan” motif attempts to return, but is swept back by wild, flying turbulence, underpinned by undertones of almost brutal percussion. Dark, brooding colours emerge, against which lyrical moments seem plaintive, though they persist. Swirling themes, rising perhaps like dust off the desert or distant smoke, are undercut by ominous rumbling. Horns call, and the orchestra surges, before suddenly breaking off and falling silent. Given that this Vorspeil was written effectively in exile, when the Nazis were hounding out “degenerate” modern composers, Schreker didn't have a chance. Vorspeil zu einer Grossen Oper (Memnon) was premiered in March 1958 by Hans Rosbaud, champion of new music, for SWR in Baden-Baden so it is rather moving that SWR sponsored this new recording.
Please also read my other posts on Schreker and on the music of the Weimar period, including Walter Braunfels, Hanns Eisler, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Suppressed Composers, Weimar and other silent film etc etc

Birthdays for Infantas and dwarves : Schreker Zemlinsky

Listening again to Franz Schreker's Die Geburtstag der Infantin (The Birthday of the Infanta) in both the 1908/9 original (Jürgen Bruns, Kammersymphonie Berlin, 1992)  and in the Suite arranged in 1923, of which there are so many performances that it's pretty much standard repertoire.  Recommended recordings are Gerd Albrecht and Lothar Zagrosek.   This had me thinking aboutb the connections between the two Schreker versions,  Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, (Please read more about that HERE)  Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg, Wilde's short story, Velasquez's painting Las Meninas and the historical roots of the legend.

Schreker's Die Geburtstag der Infantin was commisioned by Grete and Elsa Wreisenthal, dancers in the "expressive" fashion of the time, an early 20th century rebellion against 19th century ballet. Think Ida Rubenstein and even the character Leni Riefenstahl played in Das blaue Licht rather than Diaghilev and the Ballets Russe. Schreker's original was thus described as "pantomime", and scored for chamber orchestra.  The Suite was created for large orchestra, minus dancers and story line.  the emphasis now is on the series of dances  which work as "pure" music. The last two sections Die Rose and Der Spiegel are missing, for reasons unknown, which is a pity, since these are  the punchline of the drama. The Infanta gives the dwarf a white rose : why does it mean so much to the dwarf ?  When he sees himself in the mirror and realizes that it is his own reflection he dies of a broken heart.

The idea that music must be "romantic" when there's a big, lush orchestra isn't true.  Romanticism with a  big "R" refers to the intellectual movement that revolutionized 19th century thought, which impacted on social and political change and on all art forms.romanticism   exploreed what we now call the Unconscious, and ideas about psychology before the term was invented. Thus the idea of the mirror, which incidentally exists in Velasquez's painting, where the artist is seen in the background  as a reverse image. He's painting the scene yet is also part of the picture.   In Velasquez's time, dwarves were no big deal at court, but for Wilde the story predicates on the Infanta who concludes "'For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts!"  So Schreker's suite revision of  Die Geburtstag der Infantin should really be understood in context. Far from being slush romance, it has a very dark side, connecting to the taste for morbidity behind the spirit of the period, which found expression in many art forms, from Baudelaire to Wilde, to the Secession in Vienna and Munich, to Hugo von Hofmannstahl, to expressionism in painting and in the cinema.  Schreker's Die Geburtstag der Infantin is also not a one-off.  Schreker would develop the ideas in many later works, most obviously Die Gezeichneten, where the "dwarf figure",  Salvago, creates a paradise which becomes a cover for depravity. What seems beautiful on the surface, just might not be so within. And vice versa - ugliness might conceal true inner beauty.  Please read my analysis of the opera here.

And thus to Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg.  Significntly, this was written 1919-1921, after Die Gezeichneten, which premiered in 1918, and at a period when Expressionist ideas were influencing art, film, music and literature. The libretto was written by Georg Klaren, adapting the story further, with multiple new connections.  Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel (who'd been her partner since 1917)  were interested too. The bucolic dwarf in Wilde's story is now a sophisticated composer "from the East", a snide reference to Zemlinsky's ancestry and his father's  pretensions to nobility.  But Klaren pointed out that the Court, for all its sumptuous riches, was "peopled with over-refined, decadent, not to say tainted characters" while the Dwarf represents a purer soul.   There's much more to the opera than Alma, who had dumped Zemlinsky in 1902. By this stage Zemlinsky was successful and married to Luise, a woman almost the reverse image of Alma, and in many ways had sublimated his feelings for Alma in art. As Anthony Beaumont writes, Der Zwerg was like a coffin "to  borrow the imagery of Dichterliebe  - in which his love and pain were laid to rest".  Perhaps the ghosts of the dwarf and those who hurt him are thus buried. Zemlimnsky's next major work was the Lyric Symphony,  a masterpiece which breaks new ground musically and in terms of subject. Please read more about that HERE and also HERE

Schreker Die Gezeichneten - Metzmacher Warlikowski

Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, easily the most rewarding full performance ever. Metzmacher gets Schreker – revealing his modernity and originality.   There are many kinds of "modern". The idea that 20th-century music can only be atonal/tonal, or dissonant /romantic, is nonsense, a notion compounded by audiences who don't actually listen, but think through preconception. Schreker was a highly original composer, very much a man attuned to the creative ferment of his time, fuelled as it was by new ideas and social change.  Die Gezeichneten flows from the same Zeitgeist that produced Freud, Expressionism, modern art and literature.  In the libretto, Schreker makes a wry dig at Puccini and Strauss, meaning, I think, Johann rather than Richard, for Die Gezeichneten has a lot in common with Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Both operas, written at the same time and premiered within a year of each other, explore the nature of creative art through a lens of morbid psychology, which is a theme which runs through much of Schreker's work.  Directed by Kryzsztof Warlikowski, this production is musically sensitive and well informed, and also connects the opera to other currents in art and society in its time. This Die Gezeichneten goes a long way to restoring Schreker's true status in cultural history.

Metzmacher conducts the Vorspiel so the surging pulse heaves, as if propelled by ocean tides.  Salvago's Elysium is an island, as isolated as the man himself, surrounded by currents beyond his control.  The moon controls tides. The image of the moon appears in the libretto, intensified by musical figures that describe darkness and flickering light.  To the Greeks, the moon symbolized Athena, the goddess of art.  For Goethe, the moon symbolized chastity, inspired by his patroness, the Duchess of Weimar.  As the Vorspeil proceeds,  we see Salvago (John Daszak) , his head covered by a bag, looking towards an orb of white light that dominates the darkened stage.  Later, when Carlotta (Catherine Nagelstad) is seduced, the orb turns red (as described in the text).

Complex dichotomies operate throughout this opera, reflecting conflicts that can never be reconciled.  Ugliness and beauty, creativity and destruction, purity and corruption: thus the churning tensions in the music.  Metzmacher isn't afraid to emphasize the contrast between lush orchestration and the savage undercurrents.  Luxury is deception. Like the grotto, beauty is delusion.  Women are violated. Lust is joyless, motivated by power, money, and something even more sinister. Carlotta succumbs, as graphically described in the text and music. Wisely, Warlikowski doesn't depict the scene, concentrating on Tamare's braggadocio and the music around it. Salvago isn't as upset by the idea of Carlotta being raped as by the realization that she might have had a part in proceedings.  We see her dressed in white, her dress back to front.  The ensemble that follows isn't a trio, because all three characters are singing at cross-purposes.  No dissonance but no harmony, either.  Wonderfully astute writing on Schreker's part and well executed in performance.

Salvago creates Elysium to please his friends, as if by creating art he can compensate for his physical ugliness. How far is he culpable when his friends misuse his grotto for evil?  Carlotta falls in love with him partly because she can see good in him, but also because she sees the potential for artistic creation of her own.  In some ways, the second act is the heart of the whole opera. Carlotta's friend paints only hands, but the hands she paints are so expressive that they can portray whole stories. Art is invention, but can reveal deeper truths.  Thus Carlotta, an artist, sees  more  in Salvago than meets the eye.  Thus scene is brilliantly depicted, with imagination and sensitivity.  A second stage appears behind the singers. At first we see what appears to be a dragonfly, which turns out to be a young girl. She has the head of a mouse.  Her family are around her, too, sometimes interacting. Humans with mouse heads. We are in Die Frau ohne Schatten territory, or rather the world of surreal symbolism that fascinated a generation familiar with Classical antiquity, discovering psychology and Jungian archetypes. Clips of silent movies appear  behind the action. Scenes from Der Golem, and Frankenstein, where a "monster" shows tenderness to a little girl, then scenes from The Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu where the "monster" isn't benign.  Thus Warlikowski makes connections between Die Gezeichneten and other Schreker operas, with other cultural memes which confront sexuality and fear.
 
Warlikowski doesn't need to show Carlotta with paintbrush and easel.  Her painting exists in her soul.  Does she love her creation more than reality?  Why does he pull back, paralyzed with inhibition, when his wildest dreams come true as she declares her love ? Why does she, too, pull back on the eve of their wedding ? Does she intuit that their relationship will be sterile due to his inhibitions ? Does she respond to Tamaro because he's sexual, or because he has the courage Salvago lacks?  Christopher Maltman, as Tamaro, is a hunk. Salvago lives in his head, while Tamaro lives in his body. He doesn't like mirrors because they make him face himself.  But can he escape? Warlikowski's staging (sets by Malgorzala Szczesniak) hints as what is not said.  Mirrors, often distorted, appear now and again, sometimes as physical mirrors, sometimes as subsidiary characters like Mattuccia (Heike Grotzinger) and Pietro (Dean Power), usually roles so small they don't get attention, but which exist for a reason. Salvago isn't the only person trapped in games in the guise of service to others.  A wonderful touch - Metzmacher himself is glimpsed on stage from time to time, reflected in the mirrors.
 
In this production, Salvago's spoken monologue is included, which makes a difference  since it shows how he reflects on his own condition though he can't break out of it.  Though he  didn't rape women, he is morally culpable by making the violence possible,. Extremely moving, especially since Daszak delivered it with great dignity.

Schreker writes an angelus into the music before the party.  Angels appear on stage, but angels dressed in nude suits.  They (male and female) are supposed to resemble showgirls but they dance so deftly en pointe that they're clearly ballet dancers with great technique.  The wedding guests are prissy: they don't like nakedness but sex is all around.  Later a voluptuous stripper bumps and grinds beside Salvago, who doesn't notice.  Either he's too uptight or he can't see the beauty beneath her poundage.  Eventually, like so many others before her in this production, she ends up inert, in a display case, unused.

At the end, Tamare sings about a village fiddler gone mad because  the girl he loved found another man. This is a reference to a medieval legend, which pops up often in German literature and song.  Salvago asks for his cap and bells. Has he gone mad, or are he and Tamare re-enacting an old saga ?? There are so many levels in Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, skilfully blended together,  Warlikowski's silent movie clips and business suits extend what is already in the opera, though  few productions come as close to its true spirit.  Altogether, the finest Die Gezeichneten that I can imagine, full of detail and sensitive to music and meaning.  Bayerische Staatsoper productions don't usually make it to DVD, but the audio recording to get is  the one on right HERE. Lothar Zagrosek, DSO Berlin from the Decca Entartete Musik series, which is the benchmark reference. Outstanding, and even Matthias Goerne (aged 26) in a minor role.

Please see my other articles on Schreker, Braunfels and others (including Strauss), and on silent film and Weimar.

Abschied and Vorspiel - Schreker and de Leeuw

Reinbert de Leeuw's Abschied from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Edo de Waart, recorded in Amsterdam in January, now on BBC Radio 3.  De Leeuw (b 1938) is a huge name in contemporary music, as organizer, supporter, conductor and pianist.  His numerous ventures have left less time for his own music. Though his output is limited, his work is good. Last year, at the BBC Proms, Oliver Knussen conducted his Der nächtliche Wanderer  (2003) (read more here)  Abschied is an early work, not a "farewell to life" but a starting point for new directions, looking back and looking forward.


Scored for large orchestra, de Leeuw's Abschied (1973) uses resources with magnificent sweep, suggesting a very late Romantic drama.  But darker forces rumble beneath the surface. Huge, dissonant chords, flurries of brass, rivulets of tense, bubbling figures.  As if a volcano were erupting, spewing forth lava.  Lush strings return, long sweeping lines that spread and whip backwards, as if propelled by unseen tides.  The middle section broods, passages tentatively developing before being cut off. A piano is heard within the tumult: what does this signify? Strange dissonances, but in lyrical patterns. Gradually, energy builds up, and the forward/backward dichotomy takes over. Fierce ostinato, Rite of Spring blocks merging with sweeping string lines that smear, eliding tones.  There is no resolution. Gradually sounds fade in volume and texture, single blows of percussion acting as markers. And then, it's over!  A witty piece, perfectly accessible, if not a work as sophisticated as Der nächtliche Wanderer.  But that's the point. In the forty years between the pieces, a lot has happened.

Preceding this Abschied a Prelude - Franz Schreker's Vorspiel zu einem Drama (1913) based on the prelude to Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, but expanded for stand-alone performance.  The opera encapsulated, in a sense. Far from being an obscurity, Die Gezeichneten is highly regarded, having been staged and recorded several times. In fact, there's a new production in Munich in July, to be conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, a master in this genre, with a superb cast, directed by Warlikowski. I can hardly wait.   Read here about the less musically stellar Lyon production with staging (David Bösch) that's much more faithful to the score than the famous Nagano/Lenhoff production from Salzburg many years ago.  In  Die Gezeichneten, the protagonist is rich, talented and artistic but shunned by the Beautiful People around him because he's crippled. "Branded" because he thinks he's ugly, he compensates by creating a palace so beautiful that it seduces all who enter.  Unfortunately the beauty generates evil : women are despoiled because they're desirable.

All kinds of levels of dis-ease in his opera, which touches raw nerves. No way would London audiences be able to cope.  So much for the nonsense that "Romantic" means unchallenging pap.  That attitude is "modern" and a betrayal of centuries of artistic development.  Schreker is looking backwards and forwards - no maudlin nostalgia here, despite the lush orchestration. Good programming (and performance) from de Waart and the RCOA.

Four Glinka sings from Henk Neven Doubt; Where is our Rose; Lullaby; Do not Tempt Me Needlessly wind up an interesting concert., releasing built up tension

Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten : Lyon

Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Opéra de Lyon last year, now on arte.tv and Opera Platform.  For my review of the superlative Bayerische Staatsoper production, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher please see HERE.  The translation, "The stigmatized", doesn't convey the impact of  the original title, which is closer to"The Cursed", suggesting violent exclusion from society.  This production gets close to the full horror of the drama, so it's uncomfortable listening.  In 1911, when the opera was written, and in April 1918 when it premiered in the last months of the First World War and impending collapse of the German and Austrian empires, it must have been more harrowing than we can imagine today. It's not opera which has changed, but the expectations of modern audiences who'd prefer Watch With Mother to art.

The Vorspeil opens on long shots of the sea, a surging, inconstant surface, an image that highlights the music itself, and the hidden depths in the drama.  Over these waters, young women of Genoa were transported, kidnapped from their homes, to an island not far from the city but cut off from the world around it.  In classical mythology "Elysium" refers to a perfect paradise.  In Die Gezeichneten it's a playground for the Id where moral values do not apply. On Elysium, the rich corrupt and destroy. The image of the sea gives way to images of young girls, ravaged and brutalized, imprisoned  in Elysium's dungeons. These look like clips from snuff porn, though there's no actual nudity. We're supposed to feel traumatized, for these girls are being degraded for entertainment. We see posters of the missing, so many innocent faces, torn from their homes to suffer and die, so many that you wonder why no-one seems to question the power of the corrupt. Since these girls are daughters of aristocratic families, that raises questions of complicity. How culpable is Alviano Salvago? He's a hunchbacked dwarf, apparently so repulsive that even the most degraded prostitutes won't have him.  So why did he build Elysium and let it be a sanctuary for abuse  He's an aristocrat himself, so what is his real relationship with Count Vitelozzo Tamare (Simon Neal) and the others who use and abuse Salvago's hospitality?

The opera itself offers no answers, but the production evokes Salvago's inner desolation. The noblemen are macho, dressed in black leather, Salvago in white, against a backdrop that suggests hardness and desolation.  Charles Workman is a tall, surprisingly elegant Salvago, his only deformity a red birth mark on his face, not nearly enough to make him as repellent as he assumes he is: perhaps Salvago's self-hate stems from much deeper psychic wounds.  Perhaps it's not PC to show a dwarf as a dwarf but that says more about society's refusal to accept difference than about disfigurement itself, which is not a crime. Does Salvago's distress lie in his culpability?  We don't know, but we do know that he's trying to sell Elysium and shut down the depravity it shelters.  Gradually, the black, white and grey of the set warms with shades of burgundy: the colour of wine, blood and Salvago's birth mark.

Carlotta appears, in fetching burgundy leathers.  Like Workman,  Magdalena Anna Hofmann is tall, a veritable Diana among a troop of  moral trolls. She's an artist, and artists can see beyond surface appearances.  She sees the beauty in Salvago's  soul and wants to paint his portrait. Salvago created Elysium as a temple of beauty, but let it become polluted. Although he wants, now, to gift it to the city of Genoa, he can't erase what it became.  Duke Adorno blocks the gift for what its secrets might reveal should they come out.  Markus Marquardt's  Adorno is shown as a grubby bureaucrat: the kind of nonentity that lets abusers go unpunished, all over the world. Tamare describes the wonders of Elysium, its blue lights, hypnotic perfumes and music.  The orchestra plays the lovely interlude, illustrated by projections of delicate flowers, blowing gently, but ghost-like, evoking the young women whose lives were sacrificed in the falsehood of Elysium's beauty.  In the frenzy of orgy, the lines between beauty and ugliness blur. When Carlotta declares her love for Salvago, his bitterness poisons him. He makes her feel bad, like a witch.  In this production Carlotta is clearly portrayed as a working artist, pushing Salvago to reveal his innermost self in the name of art.  She wears a paint-splattered coat:  not a passive love interest but the pivot on which the whole drama turns.  Off comes Salvago's jacket, off comes Carlotta's coat, and lights shine in the studio. The painting is finished, Salvago's soul captured.

In the introduction to the last Act, the music is illustrated by magical lights against darkness. Salvago is dancing, as happy as a child. But low woodwinds and distant, offstage vocalise remind us that this idyll is haunted. In the scene between Carlotta and Duke Adorno, director David Bösch minimizes background action, focusing instead on the singing and on fine details in the acting. This is critically important, since it is here that Carlotta tries to explain herself. The audience should pay attention. A woman hides her allure in modesty, yet reveals herself naked: complex, contradictory feelings, good intentions and primal urges.  On "this burning summer night", she wants to lie with "the goblins in the bushes". The connection between summer nights and devilry will be pretty clear to those who know the mythology behind Johannesnacht, but Bösch wisely avoids emphasizing that more clearly than is in the score.  Instead, the focus is on enchantment: magical, twinkling lights, illusion, not all that different from the delusion that Elysium stands for. Thus Salvago sings of Carlotta disappearing like a will o' the wisp. The wedding party cheer him, but he knows he has lost Carlotta even before he knows where she has gone. At last he confronts the cruelty of his situation "Ich bin kein König, bin ich ein Narr!". The crowd keep cheering : they don't care about his suffering as long as they 're having a party. 

Thundering chords. Duke Adorno reappears, now in stately black, accusing Salvago. The witness is a young girl kidnapped and raped while celebrations were going on. She's so young, she's clutching a doll.  Although it wasn't Salvago who attacked her, it happened in his house.  He's culpable.  Yet again, the music expresses things the libretto cannot explain.  Salvago hears distant music, harps, flutes, cymbals and singing voices. Echoes of Der ferne Klang and the magic music of the underground cave.  We see the image of the sea, again, this time tinged with burgundy, reminding us of the many young women whose lives were destroyed. Suddenly, we're back in the dead zone,   where young girls' bodies lie broken. Tamare mocks Salvago, who retorts that he's seen depths Tamare can't even imagine. Being an artist means being able to see what philistines like Tamare cannot comprehend.  This perhaps explains why the young women are all daughters of wealthy noblemen.  Salvago tried to create beauty. Tamare and his friends are incapable of understanding the concept of art, and are compelled to destroy anything purer, better and more elevated than themselves.  It's not lust that drive them so much as hate, the negation of creativity and art.

The young girls rise as if from the dead, clawing Tamare, as if dragging him to hell, but not before he has a vision. He's seen the hate in Salvago's eyes before. Once, at another wedding, Tamare had killed a fiddle-player, driven mad with grief.  Schreker's referring to the ancient meme of Der Speilemann. The fiddle player pops up again and again in Lieder and Romantic mythology, often as someone who loses a woman he loves though she chooses a man who can give her what he can't.  Fiddlers are also the Devil agents of mindless destructiveness.  Carlotta comes to life but cannot hear Salvago call.  The sparkles we see on the ground look now like shards of glass, yet she crawls over them to reach Tamare, who reaches out to her as he dies.   Throughout this staging, Bösch  picks up on ostensibly small details in the score and libretto, like the little red light,  which Salvago stares at. Whatever it means, it disappears abruptly. Perhaps the light has gone out for Salvago. "Bring me my fiddle, my cloak with silver bells", he cries. Alviano Salvago, the nobleman of Genoa, who aspired to build Elysium now the village fiddler gone mad because his art has failed.  

Although dark, this production represents Schreker's Die Gezeichneten more faithfully than the Nicolas Lehnhoff production for Salzburg, conducted by Kent Nagano, though the performances then were stronger, though the Lyons cast aren't at all bad. You'll need them both.  The subject matter is dark, and needs to be treated seriously. Grown-up audiences ought to cope, unless they, like the nobles of Genoa, are complicit in covering up crimes which are all too present in our own time.  In contrast, Bösch's Mozart The Marriage of Figaro, which is also available on Opera Platform, captures the elegant brightness of that opera, and the element of social satire, with airy pastel tones and warm-hearted humour.   Schreker's Die Gezeichneten will be done in July 2017 at the Bayerisches Staatsoper, with Ingo Metzmacher conducting - ideal ! - with John Daszak, Catherine Naglestad and Christopher Maltman.  The director will be Krzysztof Warlikowski.  I can hardly wait !

Walter Braunfels - Fantastic appearances of a theme of Berlioz

Tonight's Prom 68 could be a milestone. Manfred Honeck conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Walter Braunfels, Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (Fantastic appearances on a theme from Berlioz).  Braunfels (1882-1954)  is a bit of a cult composer, since relatively few have heard of him, but those who do are passionate. Honeck is one of Braunfels's champions, so this Prom might give Braunfels the prominence he deserves.

The Berlioz theme Braunfels is referring to comes from Berlioz The Damnation of Faust. All year we're having one Faust inspired work after another, from Liszt's Faust Symphony, to Mephisto Waltz,  to the revival of Gounod's Faust at the Royal Opera House, starting soon. Terry Gilliam's Faust in Jackboots ego trip doesn't count.

Braunfels specifically pinpoints the scene where Faust and Méphistophélès enter the Leipzig tavern. Both of them are out of their usual element, among "normal" people, so there's more to the scene than divertissement. Braunfels focuses on the song of the flea, which Méphistophélès sings to describe the way a mad king becomes obsessed with a flea, til his whole court are infested and suffer. Braunfels was writing during the 1914-18 war, although he was conscripted and fought in the western front. It was a traumatic period. He was injured and converted to Catholicism (from being Lutheran). Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz develops the basic theme from different angles. We hear Méphistophélès cynical swagger, and a purer, more lyrical approach, which might be Faust. Images of hell, rising from low rumblings in the orchestra,  diminuendos and rising passages, movements up and down. Smoke? Dreams? Tonight, after Prom 68, I will write much more, so please come back and bookmark/subscribe.

This week I've been listening again to Walter Braunfels Die Vögel (the Birds) which comes from the same period as the Fantastical variations. In Die Vögel, birds do what fleas do in Faust : the opera is altogether more complex and sophisticated. Indeed, Die Vögel and the Phantastische Erscheinungen need to be heard together for full impact. The opera is sumptuously beautiful, but with a kick.

There are two recordings of Die Vogel, the first being Lothar Zagrosek's 1996 recording for Decca. It is outstanding, the soprano Helen Kwon truly captures the surreal birdsong which Braunfels incorporates into the part. (Link here to Zagrosek's The Birds on amazon). I hate to say it, but avoid the 2010 LA Opera production which is on DVD. The conducting (Conlon) is leaden and deadening. It is not enough simply to do an opera because it's obscure. This approach is why composers like Braunfels don't get the respect they are due. Die Vögel is much more intelligent and sophisticated, and indeed more musically adventurous as the DVD would suggest.  It's the curse of the myth that Schoenberg somehow "forced" anyone to be modern. Everyone was modern in their own ways. No-one was deliberately retrogressive. I'll write more about Die Vögel when I have time. Until then, please explore this site where there is a great deal in depth about other composers "suppressed" by changes in taste and politics. For more on Braunfels, HERE is a link to a very good German site about him (with English translation)

Don't forget, lots coming up, please explore this site and come back. (try searching Schreker, Korngold, Berg, Haas, Krasa, Theresienstadt, Ullmann, Eisler, Zemlinsky etc for more goodies)

Franz Schreker Songs Holzmair Haselböck

Franz Schreker was "a master of interior states" writes Christopher Hailey, Schreker's biographer.  "The protagonists of his operas are driven by emotional psychology rather than by external events, ideas or philosophical concepts". Not Wagner or Mahler then. Nor quite the world of Ewartung or Wozzeck.  Schreker's songs are interesting, approached on their own terms, like snapshots of experience, contained within the limits of piano song.

Only 33 of Schreker's 49 songs were published in his lifetime, the remainder only in 2005. This CD Songs of Franz Schreker (Bridge 9259) is the most extensive recording,. Wolfgang Holzmair, Hermine Haselböck and Russel Ryan are excellent. One could hardly hope for better performances. Holzmair specializes in less well known Austrian repertoire, so his interpretation evolves from long familiarity with the period. His voice is clear, clean and assertive, yet with a soft Austrian burr that adds a warm glow. Haselböck has an equally elegant style, which suits these songs well. One, Im Garten unter der Linde dates from 1896, when Schreker was only 17.

Much more attractive is Das hungernde Kind, from 1898. It's the same text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn that Mahler used in Das iridische Leben five years previously. Schreker's setting is briskly foursquare. No angst here, no psychological insight whatsoever. The tempo quickens slightly as the child gets more frantic, while the mother's music smiles, enigmatically. One shouldn't sympathise with child abuse, but the song's so charming, Yet what can it mean?

From this period also come two Mutterlieder songs to poems by Mai Holm, which Schreker revised extensively and published as his op 5. They're here in context with other, unconnected songs about the death of children  Like post mortem photographs, songs about the death of children were popular in the 19th century when child mortality was high. Although Schreker's sister had died some years before, it's probably not a good idea to read anything too personal into these songs of lyrical, stylized grief. If anything, the imagery fits best with the songs of flowers, a symbol of beauty that fades too fast. Rosengruss is attrractively ornamented, but for me the most touching is Rosentod to a poem by Dora Leen (Dora Pollack) who was for a while engaged to Schreker and who died in a concentration camp in the 1940's. There are three other songs to her poems, Spuk, Traum and Sommerrfaden, all set with a delicate touch so the naive simplicity of the poems isn't compromised. 

More sophisticated, and more musically satisfying are the later songs, such as four of the five settings of poems by Edith  Ronsperger (1880-1921), written in 1909, included to give a broader perspective. One of the best known is  Der Dunkleheit sinkt schwer wei Blie (Darkness falls as heavy as lead). Hailey draws the parallels with Schoenberg, in particularly Ewartung, though it's a much less complex piece and lasts only 3 minutes. But Schreker blends oppressive dark chords with menacing intervals.  It's highly dramatic, even though it doesn't develop into something more. This is Schreker, opera composer, showing what he can do with song.

It's also the spirit of Expressionism. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari  (click link for full download)! The current fashion for downgrading modernism would have it that Schreker was retrogressive and backward-looking.  Just as the Nazis suppressed composers like Schreker, "fans" these days suppress what makes them modern and worthwhile. Schreker knew Schoenberg, for example, and was well aware of society changing around him.  He had no illusions about conservatism or tradition for its own sake.  Think Irrelohe with its premonitions of the collapse of the old order.  So it's good that this worthy recording includes the song Das feurige Männlein from 1915. A troll astride a demonic stallion. It's First World War Feuerreiter, unleashing Armageddon in his trail. Weh! schreien die Menschen, die Bäum' und die Stein' - und das feuerige Männlein lauscht graig hinein.
Please see my other posts on Schreker, more here than other sites.

Schreker Irrelohe - the flames of madness

Famously, the name Irrelohe came to Franz Schreker when he heard a train station master call out the name of a tiny hamlet. The name's mellifluous, the meaning is not. "The flames of madness" The plot's  straight out of a horror movie.

Dramatic overture, pulsating cadences like some somnolent monster. Wind instruments whip upwards - a hint of flames and smoke. The word "Irrelohe" repeats throughout. Irrelohe castle stands menacingly above the village. Long ago an Irrelohe ancestor had a relationship with an immortal spirit. All Irrelohe men since are cursed. They'll suddenly go insane, attack a virgin and die.

A peasant called Peter is in love with a beauty called Eva. Idyllic, except that Peter's mother is deranged by some trauma  in her past. Amazingly, Peter doesn't know the local legend or who his father might be, until sinister stranger Christobald arrives who seems to know many secrets. On Count Irrelohe's wedding day, 30 years ago, the village was making merry. Suddenly flames leapt out of Graf Irrelohe's head, his eyes bulged and he ravished a red (flame) haired village maid violently in front of the whole community. Then Christobald  reveals that he was due to marry the girl who was raped. No-one of course did a thing.  Class warfare, disguised as medieval romance. Graf Irrelohe went on to have other children but died insane. Christobald left the village and became a wandering minstrel. Ein Spielmann - follow the link for more. Schreker's connecting to a long German tradition  but deals with the violent sex without shirking. No euphemisms,, no romantic gloss. In 1922-4 when the opera was written, ideas of sexual aberration were being confronted for the first time. Schreker links a traditional German icon to depraved psychosis. It was shocking. No wonder Schreker gained a reputation for being "unhealhy". His relative obscurity after his death is blamed on the Nazis but in fact there's a lot more behind it.


Musically Irrelohe is disturbing because Schreker combines rhythms of traditional German drinking songs and dances with discordant dissonace. It's not specially modern but makes deliberate references to Wagner - Loge's flames, Irrelohe's flames, (hear the link "lo"  in the music)  Wotan protects his daughter from sex, while other women are destroyed by curses and power structures. Cosima would have hated Irrelohe whatever Schreker's ancestry might have been. Richard Wagner, I suspect would have loved it (though there's no competition between Wagner and Schreker in musical terms).

Demonism, too. The parson, the miller and Eva's father, the forester, meet at the crossroads. There's the usual icon of a crucifix, like you see all over Germany and Austria.  They're there for the pious to stop and rest, but also because in mythology, crossroads are vulnerable places where the Devil can enter. This cosy village Trinity leaves, replaced by a much more malevolent trinity. Ratzekahl, Strahlbusch and Fünkchen are Spielmännern too, musicians who turn up out of nowhere. Ostensibly they play at village parties - where drink is served and inhibitions lower -  but they're also faintly dangerous. Christobald's their leader. Gott, Mensch und Tier, sie sündigen alles, Nur durch Feuer kann Friede werden (God, man and beast, all sinners. Only through Fire can peace be reached.)

Think back to Der Feuerreiter, Eduard Mörike's poem inspired by ancient folk legend. He's an elemental who suddenly appears destroying the village economy in a holocaust of flame. The devil, maybe, but also a creature of nature. Just as the Feuerreiter appears first as a glimpse of a red cap, someone's spied  ein greisgrau Männlein mit einer Spitz, roten Feder am Hut (an ash headed dwarf with a pointy hat topped with a red feather)  Something's in the wind, says the forester, lots more fires than usual this year.

Meanwhile Eva has met Graf Heinrich, the current Lord of Irrelohe. He's seized with an irrational passion for her, but the madness hasn't taken over yet. In fact, Eva lusts for him desperately, she'd hardly resist. They decide to marry then and there. What a coincidence that Christobald and his Spielmännern have suddenly materialized.

However it's not Graf Heinrich who jumps a virgin, but Peter, crazed by his unrequited love for Eva.  Tie me up, he begs his mother, or I'll do something bad. Like turn into a werewolf, or the first born son of the last Lord Irrelohe. Heinrich is the second son, the Count raped Lola on his wedding day 30 years before. Now Heinrich must duel with Peter who is the living image of their father. Freudian minefield. The text ending's trite. Eva and Heinrich welcome the flames that destroy the castle (and presumably his mother, servants and fortune). Yet the idea is liberating, getting rid of the baggage of the past. Schreker's music has the last word. It swells up majestically, crackling with infernal energy. Götterdämmerung in a quaint rustic context. Schreker's not as good as Wagner, but wow, this is dramatic, and sinister. Eva and Heinrich think the fire is purifying because it ends their curse. In Irrelohe, the curse was caused by sex, but Die Spielmännern live on to wreak havoc elsewhere. There'll be other fires to come, and worse.

Schreker is currently fashionable because Bard discovered the comparatively twee Der ferne Klang. which is heard in full production in major European houses like Zurich. That opera contains fallen women and haunted men, but Irrelohe takes obsession to extremes. Musically it's altogether stronger and more pointed. The Spielmännern are like demons, emerging from the unconscious, destroying order and reason. After the social upheavals of the 1920's it must have been hard to take. Last month there was a production of Irrelohe in Bonn, at least the third since the Schreker revival thitrty years ago. Unfortunately, there's only one recording, a fairly basic live performance recorded in 1989,  unexceptional singers and the Wiener Symphoniker, who are not the Wiener Philharmoniker. But imagine Irrelohe performed by players who think beyond the idea that Schreker's no more than late, late Romantic. Ingo Metzmacher, we need you.

Thanks to a reader who knows this opera well,, here is a link to the current Bonn production which is apparently "outstanding". Complete with video. Review above. The production continues to Feb 2011. Look at what else is on in Bonn ! Puts Bard into perspective.

Coming up this week

Coming up soon on this site : György Kurtág Kafka Fragements, a preview of Alexander Raskatov's A Dog's Heart, Franz Schreker Irrelohe and at last the second CD of Ma Sicong Music for Violin and Piano. which has been top of my listening list for months. So beautiful that I haven't been able to write well enough to do it justice. Strange, how the more you love something the harder it is to fully express.

Which is why I've been slower than usual about writing up Kurtág Kafka Fragements, at the Barbican Hall with Dawn Upshaw. This is a piece I care about passionately. It's radical because it presents a different listening experience, where the music "happens" when ideas connect on a deep level in the listener's psyche. Maybe that's what happens with all music, but more so with Kurtág's extreme concision. Ideas distilled into homeopathic intensity that expand in your soul. Peter Sellars' staging, on the other hand, ignores Kurtág's whole concept. Thanks to Sellars, now Kurtág undergoes the equivalent of what would happen to European and Japanese art cinema if it were remade for daytime TV soaps. Full review coming up in Opera Today.

This is particularly tragic because the Barbican has been doing wonderful things for contemporary music and opera. Last year they did Eötvös's Angels in America, and Michael van der Aa's After Life. This is courageous programming, for which the Barbican deserves praise, particularly as the South Bank has lost its vision. In the past they've done the Saariaho operas, which Peter Sellars' semi staging did wonders for, even if his Kurtág was a self-indulgent misreading. Starting soon, the Barbican's continuing its acclaimed series of baroque opera, with Handel's Alcina. This is important because Barbican baroque choices are very good indeed. Definitely one of the hippest venues in London.

At the ENO, Simon McBurney's Raskatov A Dog's Heart looks extremely interesting. Anything premiered at The Holland Festival is likely to be challenging, so we're lucky that the ENO has brought this over. Fascinating concept, executed by Complicite, one of the finest modern drama ensembles around. This is serious drama, real music theatre people, as opposed to directors moonlighting from elsewhere. I've seen clips and read up on it - this should be exciting. Please come back to this site as I'll be writing lots. And get to the show, which starts 20th.

And of course Francesco Cilea Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House Thursday. When this was done at another venue two years ago some of my friends adored it (others said it was toffee).  I missed it then, but heard it on BBC Radio 3. So I can't miss it now with a megastar cast. Angela Gheorghiu, Alessandro Corbelli, and Jonas Kaufmann in a role that should suit him well.

Insightful Mahler 7 Metzmacher Prom 34

Interpretively, Mahler's Seventh Symphony is intriguing. Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at Prom 34 penetrates depths rarely accessed. If "a symphony contains the world", contradiction is fundamental. Metzmacher goes straight for the contradiction and reveals so much about the innate nature of Mahler's idiom that it bears thoughtful, careful relistening.

Of all Mahler’s symphonies, Symphony no 7 is controversial because there are many scattered clues as to its interpretation, some wildly conflicting. It 's emotionally ambivalent,  hence the variations in performance practice. This is not a symphony where “received wisdom” has any place.

The opening bars were inspired by the sound of oars, on a boat being rowed across a lake. Immediately an idea of duality is established,  bassoons paired with horns, their music echoed by strings and lighter winds. The "oars" gently give way to a slow march which will later develop in full, manic force. If the horns sounded slightly sour, this was no demerit, for distortion pervades this whole symphony, where all is heard under cover of night. Beneath the gentle surface flow disturbing undercurrents.

Metzmacher conducts with real aplomb, rather, I suspect, like Mahler did himself (see picture). He smiles, and rounds his fist in huge, expansive gestures, and the musicians  respond with richer, rounder playing.

Despite the nightmare aspects of this symphony, humour keeps breaking through.  Cowbells in a sophisticated orchestra? Perhaps Mahler is reminding us that life is about other things than being too serious. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin's cowbells are wonderfully resonant, truly Wunderhorn-like, evoking associations, either from some recess in Mahler's memory, or from his earlier works (which is why knowing Mahler's whole output assists appreciation of individual works). Yet this nostalgia is neither cosy, nor comforting. The sharp pizzicatos, dark harp chords and almost jazz-like dissonances are meant to disturb, and the DSO Berlin players do them with whip-like savagery.  This is “night music” after all, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Resolution is not going to come until the blazing end, when the work is complete.

Just as the first and last movements form an infrastructure, the core of the symphony is the scherzo Schattenhaft, literally “shadow-like”.  This is no gemütlich Viennese waltz but one which harks back to a much more ancient, and darker, concept of dance as of demonic possession. It reflects the subversive Dionysian aspects of the 3rd Symphony. The strings, of course, take pride of place. Remember Freund’ Hein, the fiddler of death, though death is by no means the only interpretation in this bipolar symphony.  Metzmacher lulls us with the gentler aspects of this music, so the eerier depths sound all the more unsettling. Just as in the best horror stories, the scariest bits are those you can’t quite identify at first.

The famous horn dialogues of Nachtmusik 1 exemplify the contrasts that run throughout this symphony. Mahler shifts from major to minor, from upfront, blazing fanfares to shadowy cowbells heard from a distance. Strident trombone calls contrast with intricate trills in the strings. In contrast, the mandolin and guitar of Nachtmusik 2 are embedded in the orchestra, so they arise even more mysteriously into the consciousness,  as if from a distance. They function much as the cowbells did before. Metzmacher makes the connection.

Thus the contrast with massed strings. But the simplicity is sympathetically reinforced by a superb solo by the orchestra's Leader (Wei Lu). The humble troubador's music is private, not meant to be heard by the slumbering masses, a "ferne Klang". The first violin, however, makes it clear how important the image is. Then the cellos pick up the concept, their deeper, more sophisticated sounds echoing the mandolin and guitar. The Rondo-finale is magnificent, but Metzmacher and his players understand the crucial human-scale pathos that runs beneath.

And what a finale Metzmacher creates! its fanfares, alarums and crashing percussion drive away the ambiguities of the Nachtmusiks like brilliant sunshine drives away the shadows of the night. Dominant major keys return. The solemn march of the first movement becomes a blitzkrieg stampeding wildly forwards. The deceptive patterns of Rondo repeats seem to contradict the forward flow, until, at the end, the trajectory surges forth again, triumphant.

This final movement is carefully scored with no less than seven ritornellos and several secondary themes. Trumpets, drums and bells normally evoke sounds of triumph, but what is really in this triumph? Not bluster, according to Metzmacher, for his Mahler isn't brutalist. Contradictions again. He keeps control of the intricate architecture even when the music explodes in exuberance. A Messiaen dawn chorus, each bird distinctly clear in the cacophony.

This turbulent, life-enhancing energy is more indicative of Mahler’s personality than conventional wisdom allows. Dionysus, the god Pan, the subversive Lord of Misrule has broken loose again, intoxicated with love of life.

Easily this was the finest Mahler Prom this season, though there hasn't been any real competition. It's probably not a "first Mahler", since it's not superficial and needs a basic understanding of the composer's work as a whole, but there is a lot in it, and it's a genuine contribution to Mahler performance practice.

Metzmacher has long championed "suppressed music", composers banned by the Nazis for various reasons. His approach is important, because he hears the music in its true beauty. My friend and I had come for Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang – Nachtstück. Wonderfully lustrous performance, the strings particularly luminous. This matters, for Der ferne Klang is a much deeper opera than its plot might suggest. "The Distant Sound"  is literally heard from afar as it's played offstage by an invisible musician. It's seductive, ravishing, hypnotic but dangerous, for the composer who hears it sacrifices all.

Although the opera has just been premiered in the US, it's had quite a few performances in recent years in Europe.  Indeed, Metzmacher conducted the whole opera earlier this year, please read a review in Die Welt. There is a lot more to Schreker than ultra-late Romantic, the cliché which he's been saddled with. Please see what else I've written about Schreker for example Die Gezeichneten, and Der Geburtstag der Infantin) him, and come back because I'll be doing more, esp on Christophorus.

The Royal Alberrt Hall went wild for Leonidas Kavakos because he's wonderful. He took three bows and did an encore. But I'd come for Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Kavakos exceeded all expectations. He brings out its European intensity, very rigorous, incisive playing. Because Kavakos treats it stringently as the serious music it really is, you appreciate how interesting Korngold really was, behind the surface glamour of Hollywood.

Before Die Gezeichneten - Franz Schreker - Der Geburtstag der Infantin

Franz Schreker's masterpiece, Die Gezeichneten opens this weekend in Los Angeles, under the name "The Stigmatized". It's worth preparing for, because the plot's complicated and quite unsavoury (child abduction and rape). Much isn't "revealed", but rather intimated, which to me is one of its strengths. Please read what I've written about the  2005 Salzburg production. Orchestrally, it's outstanding, Nagano is intense, wonderful transparent textures despite the density of the score. Moreover, he doesn't over-romaticize the grimmer depths. See HERE, too, for my original piece with video clips from the DVD

Another way to prepare for Die Gezeichneten (it's not such a difficult word to learn) is to listen to Schreker's much earlier Der Geburtstag der Infantin. .It's based on the Oscar Wilde story, The Birthday of the Infanta (read full story here)

The Infanta is privileged, but there's tragedy in her past. Her mother died after her birth, her father's still distraught. She lives in ultimate luxury, because her dad's the King of Spain and rules the world. As a birthday gift, some noblemen buy a boy from the forest to amuse her. He's utterly guileless, talks to birds etc, completely the opposite to the claustrophobic artifice in the palace.The boy entertains the Infanta who tosses him a white rose. Later he walks into a secret room of mirrors and sees a monster. He's terrified. His heart breaks when he realizes that the "monster" is himself, an ugly dwarf. "Huh," sneers the Infanta, "I don't want anyone with a heart near me". Who's the real beauty here, the princess or the dwarf?

So the parallels with Die Gezeichneten are clear. Why didn't Schreker make anything more of it then, in 1908?  Perhaps it's because it was written to showcase the talents of the three Wiesenthal sisters who, like Schreker himself, moved on to other things.The original manuscript was lost til the 1980's though there's an arrangement in Schreker's hand dedicated to Willem Mengelberg in Amsterdam.

Der Geburtstag der Infantin.is pretty straightforward scene setting (Schreker was only 30), but the music's gorgeously rich and luscious. That's the life the Infanta leads, where everything's grand luxe, and, like her palace it's meant to be stunning. But Schreker wasn't a Romantic escapist. The point of the story is that the Dwarf is the purer soul. The Infanta's music is beautiful, but that's an illusion. Schreker, whose mother was an aristocrat, and grew up in privileged circles, wasn't unaware that the rich use people like toys. Die Gezeichneten, written with the collapse of the Austrian empire, allowed him to explore these ideas much further.

The critical point in Der Geburtstag is the final scene where the boy enters the hall of mirrors and is destroyed by self-knowledge. Sudden, strident strings that break off, tiny tentative figures, overwhelmed by violent trumpets, percussion, basses. The boy's melody tries to surface but it's smashed. Schreker is moving away from music for dance, even though the Weisenthal sisters weren't "ballet dancers" but avant garde modern dance pioneers.

Further music to explore: Schreker's Der Wind (see clip below) which was written for Grete Wiesenthal the year after Der Geburtstag der Infantin, and has some of the strange, not-quite-Romantic ambienceof Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg, a one act opera which, if paired with Der Geburtstag would make an interesting programme. And of course Die Gezeichneten, or "The Stigmatized" as I hope it will not come to be known.

Vienna to Weimar -Study Day, New Directions arising

The mark of a good conference is the amount of new ideas it generates. The Vienna to Weimar study at Kings Place on Saturday 30/1 should keep anyone interested in the period busy for ages.

As Prof Erik Levi said in his opening speech, the period was marked by many new directions and possibilities. Just as society was adjusting to change, so did music. Douglas Jarman spoke about the new mood in Vienna at the turn of the last century. He elucidated the relationship between Schoenberg and Eisler. Peter Franklin focused on three depictions of Paradise in opera of the period: Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane , Pfitzner's Das Herz and Schreker's Der Schmeid von Gent. Racism is nuts because it pigeonholes composers by their origins, not their music. Then, Gudo Heldt showed clips from various films (including Kuhle Wampe) to illustrate different ways of writing music for film. Watch the bicycle symphony in part 1, where the men stand still in expectation while the music whizzes madly. Once they start off: silence. The music's not background but commentary.

What are the directions I'm thinking in terms of ? For one, the role of Munich, whose Secession movement started five years before Vienna. Indeed the very term Jugendstil derives from the radical Munich magazine Jugend. (as does the word kitsch!) More artists, designers radical social politics and writers in Munich but that's where the aesthetic developed. And remember there were almost as many articles about music in the journal of the Blaue Reiter movement as about painting. And of course Schoenberg was heavily involved. Lots of reasons why Vienna captures the public imagination but it wasn't the full story.

Over Xmas I spent ages listening to K A Hartmann's Simplicissmus. See analysis HERE. Hartmann sends up Nazism while ostensibly writing "medieval" music that should have appealed to retrogressive tastes. Subversive! This puts Carmina Burana into a different context: the jury's still not completely out on Carl Orff. And the idea of Hollywood arising from Weimar. Franz Waxman, for example who conducted The Blue Angel and went on to write the music for The Bride of Frankenstein. (1935). He was both jazz and classical: blending genres and stereotypes long before Korngold, Eisler and the post Anschluss emigration. See "David Weber". And then: the whole effect of American and Anglo culture. Brecht and his "international" names, exotic themes injected into Germanic culture. Even the hero of The Testament of Dr Mabuse bears the incongruous name of "Tom Kent". (I'll upload the movie soon as it's the best of the Lang Mabuse triology)

The photo shows Hannah Hoch's 1919 collage Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife, the Weimar Photomontage. Hoch, who was an all-round remarkable character. really unusual personality, disrupts the idea of"formal" painting. She's using the idea of disconnected images to create a new whole. Think musique concrète, think Varèse. To understand the future of classical music, it's essential to properly understand the past. And that won't happen if the 20th century is ignored. PLease see my other posts about Vienna-Wrimar, including a way of recreating the song recital for yourself, a comparison of Weimar and Chinese films and a detailed review of Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus. PLus lots and lots of related topics -- use search facility.

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.