Brahms Da unten im Tal

Yesterday at the Wigmore Hall an important recital - Brahms and Schumann four-part songs. It's always an occasion when they're performed live because it isn't easy to get four top singers together whose voices balance perfectly and who can get the intricate interplay of harmonies. The two Brahms sets, Liebeslieder Waltzes op 52 and Neues Liebeslieder Waltzes op 65, are quite a hefty undertaking, as performances usually include other Brahms part songs like the exquisite Der Abend, one of my all time favourites. Detailed review follows soon in Opera Today. The last time I heard a Brahms Liebeslieder programme live was also at the Wigmore Hall, in 1997?, very beautiully sung by Christoph Prégardien, Ingeborg Danz, Juliane Banse and Thomas Quasthoff.  The absolute classic recording is Peter Schreier, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Edith Mathis and Brigitte Fassbaender, all but DFD Wigmore Hall regulars.

This time the singers were Bernarda Fink, Sylvia Schwartz, Michael Schade and Robert Holl. Fink and Holl are extremely experienced, top of their Fach, so I wasn't disappointed by Thomas Quasthoff's no-show. Quasthoff wasn't overlooked though, because Michael Schade gave a short speech with a message from him. "Quasthoff talks a lot, so I will do too". Unfortunately that's all too true. Perhaps there are reasons, but I'm more into music than into celebrities. Holl is doing another solo recital on Sunday at the Wigmore Hall - get to it to hear what real Lieder singing is about. He's singing Brahms Vier ernste Lieder, which he does grippingly well. Be there - it will be an experience and maybe even an education. Holl's not young but his technique is so firm, and his expressive ability is so strong, he's impressive.

Da unten im Tal was one of the encores. As Schade noted, it was one of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's favourites, I've put it up here as a sample. The song seems simple, like folk melody, but listen carefully to the desperation in the undertones. The girl knows her lover is a cad, who will always be false and will betray her, as he's probably cheated on many before. Yet her love is so intense that she'll cherish the moment while it lasts. Schwarzkopf shows how the girl has dignity and poise, despite her anguish. And so the poignant last strophe in which a tumult of emotion is distilled into quiet resignation:

Für die Zeit, wo du gliebt mi hast,
Da dank i dir schön,
Und i wünsch, daß dir's anderswo
Besser mag gehn.

(For the time that you made me happy, I thank you. And I wish you well wherever you may wander)

EMI Icons bargain sets

Some great value sets of "Icons" being rereleased in ultra cheap boxed sets. Useful reference libraries even if you have the originals or releases in past formats.
 
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf on a 10 CD set - now is the time to listen with John Steane's book on her recordings in hand.  An eye-opener, or rather ear-opener for those brought up inheriting clichés from past "singer wars". Singer wars are still with us, but they're such an infantile, delimiting way of listening.  Schwarzkopf was a true artist, who was probably harder on herself than anyone else (barring Walter Legge who was a tyrant).   But success attracts negative envy. Schwarzkopf  gets hate way out of proportion to who she was, and often it's viciously personal and misogynistic, rather than based on her real contributions to song. John Steane adored her, and he knew more about singers in her time than most. If she's good enough for him, she's worth respect.

Elisabeth Schumann on a 6CD set, for studio recordings in her time were rarer than they became later. Some of these are off radio broadcasts, and the sound quality is awful. But Schumann's voice is so silvery it's worth making the effort. Years ago I helped transcribe her private letters, which were charming even when she was just dashing off notes in a rush.

Hermann Prey, another 10 CD set which works out at less than £3 per disc. There have been several Prey collections, partly because  he recorded for Philips and they sold the rights on. Prey was eclipsed by the greater fame of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, though he's arguably better in opera. But Prey had warmth and personality in his voice, ideal in repertoire like Loewe and Brahms, and underestimated in Schubert.

Plenty of past releases in this Icon series since EMI has copyright muscle, which smaller labels and artists can't compete with.  Among these are sets of  Kirsten Flagstad, Nicolai Gedda, Fritz Wunderlich and Hans Hotter. 

Sibelius Luonnotar - creating the Universe

This is the most stunning Sibelius Luonnotar I've ever seen. The performance, by Karita Mattila, is exceptionally clear and forceful.  Just listen to the piercing legato, projected so the voice could carry over thousands of miles, across even time and space.  What makes this clip, too, is the video. Whoever made it knows what Luonnotar means and why she's the central figure in the Kalevala.

Luonnotar (Op. 70, 1913) must be one of the most distinctive pieces in the repertoire. It transcends both song and symphonic form. Fiendishly difficult to perform, this unique piece needs an appreciation of the very unusual mind that shaped it. Sibelius was at a crossroads. With his Fourth Symphony he was reaching towards new horizons but hadn’t quite come to terms with their implications. He was approaching uncharted waters and the prospect was daunting. As before, he turned to the ur-source of Finnish mythology for inspiration.

Luonnotar was the Spirit of Nature, Mother of the Seas, who existed before creation, floating alone in the universe before the worlds were made "in a solitude of ether". Descending to earth she swam in its primordial ocean for 700 years. Then a storm blows up and in torment, she calls to the god Ukko for help. Out of the Void, a duck flies, looking for a place to nest. Luonnotar takes pity and raises her knee above the waters so the duck can nest and lay her eggs. But when the eggs hatch they emit great heat and Luonnotar flinches. The eggs are flown upwards and shatter, but the fragments become the skies, the yolk sunlight, the egg white the moon, the mottled bits the stars. This was the creation myth of the Karelians who represented the ancient soul of the Finnish cultural identity.

The orchestra may play modern instruments and the soprano may wear an evening gown, but ideally they should convey the power of ancient, shamanistic incantation, as if by recreating by sound they are performing a ritual to release some kind of creative force. The Kalevala was sung in a unique metre, which shaped the runes and gave them character, so even if the words shifted from singer to singer, the impact would be similar. Sibelius does not replicate the metre though his phrases follow a peculiar, rhythmic phrasing that reflects runic chant. Instead we have Sibelius’s unique pulse. In my jogging days, I’d run listening to Night Ride and Sunrise, finding the swift, "driving" passages uncommonly close to heart and breathing rhythms. It felt very organic, as if the music sprang from deep within the body. This pulse underpins Luonnotar too, giving it a dynamism that propels it along. They contrast with the big swirling crescendos, walls of sonority, sometimes with glorious harp passages that evoke the swirling oceans.

But it is the voice part which is astounding. Technically this piece is a killer – there are leaps and drops of almost an octave within a single word. When Luonnotar calls out for help, her words are scored like strange, sudden swoops of unworldly sounds supposed to resound across the eternal emptiness. These hint of the wailing, keening style that Karelian singers used. This cannot be sung with any trace of conservatoire trained artifice: the sounds are supposed to spring from primeval forces. After the duck approaches in a quite delightful passage of dancing notes, the goddess expresses agony for its predicament. Those cries of "Ei! Ei!" – and their echo – sound avant-garde even by modern standards. The breath control required for this must be formidable. Singing over the cataclysmic orchestral climax that builds up from "Tuuli kaatavi, tuuli kaatavi!" must be quite some challenge. The sonorous wall of sound Sibelius creates is like the tsunami described in the text, and the soprano is riding on its crest.

Luonnotar is a complex creature, godlike and childlike at the same time, strong enough to survive eons of floating in ravaged seas, yet gentle enough to cradle a hapless duck. The singer needs to convey that raw primal energy, yet also somehow show the kindness and humour. The sheer physical stamina of singing this tour de force probably accounts for its relative rarity on the concert platform. Luonnotar swam underwater for centuries, so a soprano attempting this must pray for "swimmer's lungs".

The last passages in the piece are brooding, strangely shaped phrases which again seem to reflect runic chanting, as if the magical incantation is building up to fulfilment. And indeed, when the creation of the stars is revealed, the orchestra explodes in a burst of ecstasy. The singer recounts the wonder, with joy and amazement: "Tähiksi taivaale, ne tähiksi taivaale". ("They became the stars in the heavens!"). I can just imagine a singer eyes shining with excitement at this point - and with relief, too, that she’s survived! As Erik Tawaststjerna said, "the soprano line is built on the contrast between … the epic and narrative and the atmospheric and magical".

In his minimalist text, Sibelius doesn’t tell us that  in the Kalevala, Luonnotar goes on to carve out the oceans, bays and inlets and create the earth as we know it, or tell us that she became pregnant by the storm and gave birth later to the first man. But understanding this piece helps to understand Sibelius’s work and personality. Like the goddess, he was struggling with creative challenges and beset by self-doubt and worry. Perhaps through exploring the ancient symbolism of the Kalevala, he was able in some way to work out some ideas: in Luonnotar, I can hear echoes of the great blocks of sound and movement in the equally concise and to the point Seventh Symphony. The year after Luonnotar, Sibelius was to explore ocean imagery again in The Oceanides, whose Finnish title is Aallottaret, or "Spirit of the Waves", just as Luonnotar was the Spirit of Nature, tossed by waves. The Oceanides, written for a lucrative commission from the United States, is a more popular work, and beautiful, but doesn’t have quite the unconventional intensity and uniqueness of Luonnotar. One of the things that fascinates me about Sibelius is the way he envisions remarkable new territory, yet pulls back as if overwhelmed by the force of what lies ahead. One day, maybe I'll writre about the Eighth Symphony and why he might havce withdrawn it at a late stage.

Luonnotar was written for, and premiered by the great Finnish soprano Aino Ackté. Given that she was a diva, I’m not sure what she would have made of the grittier aspects of the piece, but she was a Finnish nationalist after all, and knew its implications. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was another early champion. When she sang it in Helsinki in 1955, she was moved to say that it was the "best thing she had ever done in her life". There is a clip of this performance but sound quality is poor, especially in comparison with Mattila. Schwarzkopf had guts: until then, most sopranos steered clear of this piece unless they were Finnish and weren't bothered about the savagery in the part. Later it almost became popular, though most of the early recordings until Söderström are unexceptional.


Soile Isokoski and Karita Mattila have both made it a keynote in their repertoires. Isokoski sang it dozens of times, but her best official recording (Neemi Jarvi NOT Paavo) isn't up to some of her live performances. I'm not quite sure which recording this Mattila version is but the orchestra is not in her league. I'd venture it must be CBSO with Sakari Oramo, who is a close personal friend of Mattila. Still, for that singing, one can compromise!

Love song in code - Hugo Wolf

On the surface, this song, Hugo Wolf's Epiphanias, sounds like a typical song about the Three Kings bringing gifts. But there's a secret code behind it. The gifts the composer is thinking about aren't gold, myrrh and frankincense but something closer to his heart. The great love of Hugo Wolf's life was Melanie Köchert, the wife of his friend and loyal patron. Köchert was the top jeweller in Vienna, who sold Mahler his wedding rings. Obviously the lovers had to be discreet but the husband had a mistress, too, and adored Wolf, so Wolf was able to spend a lot of time with the family. He concealed the love song within the festive, Christmassy text because 6th January(Epiphany) was his beloved's birthday, and they could pass it off as a birthday offering. So Epiphanias in this case is an epiphany on several levels, particularly as it came in the early part of their relationship.

The song was written on 27 December 1888, while Wolf was spending the holidays with the family. In Goethe's time and quite likely in late 19th century Vienna, household masques like this weren't unknown : indeed, Goethe staged a presentation of this very poem at Weimar in 1781. Moreover, people used to have processions door-to-door bearing a star. The parallel with Wagner children serenading Cosima on her birthday wouldn't have been lost on Wolf if he'd known.

What a wonderful occasion it must have been - the three children solemnly marching in, dressed in colourful costumes, as Wolf played the piano and someone sang (we don't know the details, except that the three Köchert children were carefully coached about the distinctive personalities of each king in the song, so they too had a good time acting it out. Eric Sams, the much missed commentator, stressed the serious solidity of the song beneath its "high spirited burlesque", which anchors the humour in mock-heroic irony. The kings bring gifts, but they've come to drink wine and be merry. "we three can drink enough for six!" . And then the kick in the end "No oxen and asses here, only fine ladies and gentlemen, so we must be on our way" And off the little kids trudge as solemnly as they came in. So, droll jokes within jokes!

Gilt and guilt - Rosenkavalier past and present

Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House is getting flak because the sets look antiquated. Personally I think it adds to the mood of nostalgia, the idea that what is past can never return. So for me the ROH Rosenkavalier is beautiful, not because of the rococco decor but because the set evokes something deeper and more poignant than ornament. Indeed, gilt and guilt would be a better mindset because the opera is a gilded critique of society and material values.
I've pulled up a few clips of Rosenkavaliers past for comparison.

In her gilded cage the Marschallin reflects on the way people are horse traded like objects. If she can help it, she's going to do some good for others, like saving die kleine Sophie from a horrible fate. Pity the film quality is so poor, but look at Schwarzkopf's acting !

This is a much clearer film. Sophie is beside herself with excitement because she's overwhelmed by the ceremony of being presented with a silver rose. No way an innocent girl can see past the glamour : one good thing about the ROH Schlesinger production is that a light is shone on Octavian as he enters - he's a shining knight, like Lohengrin. Though he doesn't know it. he's come to save Sophie/Elsa. Strauss and his audiences might have got that reference. What's annoying about the Salzburg set (whole film is available) is that, while pretty it's not bright. Look at the tack black figures on the wall, not baroque silhouettes but something you'd find in a 50's cafe. And the floor in Faninal's mansion. Live, the audience wouldn't have seen the full impact, but a floor as elaborate and dominant as that doesn't add to the narrative, unless it's a very veiled reference to the oppressiveness of wealth. I don't think so as it's not borne out by much else. So Schlesinger at the ROH looks better and better.

And now the final trio, where The Marschallin gives up her last chance of happiness so that Octavian and Sophie might build a relationship based on love, not avarice. This time, the set is good because the tavern looks grubby and decrepit. It's a place used for sordid transactions, dishonesty, selfishness. Horrible as it might look, though, spiritually it's not so different from Faninal's palace, or Baron Och's illustrious ancestry. And the squalor makes the Marschallin shine out even more. She's the shining knight this time, lit up by the glory of her good soul. So who's the Rosenkavalier after all? Maybe it really is her, rather than Octavian, because it's she who makes their union possible. They'll end up like dust like everyone else but at least for a moment, there's hope. I'd love to see the ROH Rosenkavalier revived again, but with more focused direction and tighter performances. Life can be breathed into the old thing yet, just as the Marschallin brings new life to Sophie and Octavian. PS Please see what I wrote about the revival of Elektra (Charles Edwards) earlier this year - muich better than the original !

Respect for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is the target of the hate-mobs that poison the opera world. So much so that her real achievements are obscured. This was a woman who was very young when the Nazis were around, too young to have actually done anything to be compromised about. Karajan and even Furtwangler and many, many others have more to explain, but Schwarzkopf is the magnet of all blame. It says more about the haters than the hated.

Usually, also, the less people actually know about her work, the more the vindictiveness. Those who know her work and the woman have different perspectives. Matthias Goerne who trained with her and with Fischer-Dieskau, said she was a good influence because she taught him to be himself. Apart from opera, she was also seminal in advancing late 20th century attitudes to art song. If she seems mannered today, listen to singers of the 1920's and 30's. She brought intellectual and emotional rigour to song, particularly needed in soprano repertoire, where prettiness of voice is treasured, sometimes above depth. Living with an egomaniac like Walter Legge must have been hell, but she stuck with him because he did promote art, despite his personality. And if she was tough on others she was infinitely tougher on herself. She knew how much dedication goes into song and had no time for fakes or posers.

Here is an obituary written by a singer who knew her. (English translation at the bottom of the page). It's not so unusual as there are others who echo what he says. But it's a reminder of who she was.
http://www.cornelius-hauptmann.com/page5.php

Here is a clip of her singing Hugo Wolf's Kennst du das Land, still the most achingly wonderful version around. She pioneered the Wolf revival of the 1950's and 1960's although her recordings came fairly late in her career. But they've never been surpassed, even with the abundance of Wolf performance after his centenary in 2003. For the words and translation visit the site recmusic.org on the bottom of the list at the right.