Orchestre de Paris 50th Birthday Party - Berio Sinfonia flows free

The Orchestre de Paris, with Daniel Harding, click to enlarge -it's worth  it

Hugely ambitious concert marking the 50th anniversary of the Orchestre de Paris. The finest concert hall in the world,  and one of the finest orchestras too,  with new Chief Conductor Daniel Harding, and a programme showcasing the connections between sound and space.  Berio's Sinfonia, "a symphony that contains the world"  created so it constantly renews and adapts whenever it's performed anew.  A metaphor for the creative force that is music !  The concepts that make Berio's Sinfonia so innovative apply too to György Ligeti's Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes, to Jörg Widmann's Fantasie, to Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and to Debussy La Mer.   To assess this vast programme in conventional terms would be to miss its very purpose.  The Orchestre de Paris and the Philharmonie are astute, not stupid.  These works are hardly obscure.  Music doesn't have to be locked into straitjackets of form. Like the river that flows through Berio's Sinfonia, it flows onwards, absorbing many influences, fertilizing new areas, bringing renewal and rebirth.  As Berio explained, "One of my aims was to use the orchestration as a respectful and loving instrument of investigation and transformation". 

It's no accident that Berio references Mahler's Symphony no 2, with its themes of death and resurrection, and specifically to the movement in which the song  Des Antonius von Paduas Fischpredikt  resurfaces wordlessly, in orchestral guise.  Numerous other references, too, such as to Don, the first movement of Boulez's Pli selon Pli ( which means fold upon fold, ie, endless layers and permutations). (Read more HERE)  "Don" means gift, so this is like a gift  from one composer to another. What has gone before shapes what is to come, but absolutely central is the idea that music never ends.  Numerous other references, some musical, some cultural, some explicit, some so cryptic that they only reveal themselves on careful listening.  "For the unexpected is always with us!" a phrase that acts like a signpost in the vocal parts. Berio also experiments with levels of time, blending references to the past to the present and future.  "Keep going, keep going" and later "Stop!" but the music propels ever forward.

Thunderbolt ostinato, screams of protest.  London Voices supplied the archly Anglo tones that appealed to Berio's quirky sense of humour. So what if some audiences don't get everything, all at once ?  St. Anthony kept preaching to the fish, though they didn't listen and kept scrapping. 

 Berio also wrote music that would grow to fit each performance space. In the Philharmonie, the Sinfonia swelled to fit the vast space, where the acoustic  is so fine that it doesn't dampen fine detail. This time the whispers in the voice parts could be heard, imperceptibly, and tiny figures in the orchestration weren't lost  Though Berio uses a large orchestra, big blast is not the way to do this piece.  Harding builds up the layers of colour and texture so they shine . Much in the way Impressionist painters kept their brush strokes clear.  Thus the elegant symmetry of the programme, balancing Berio's Sinfonia with Debussy La Mer. Both pieces are impressionistic in the way details are built up without being muddied, individual cells kept clean and vibrant. La Mer was revolutionary because it marked a sea change in style. It thrives best when conducted like this, where the energy flows freely.  For French orchestras La Mer is a signature piece : the symbol of modern French style.  

In Sinfonia, Berio also makes references to Ligeti and specifically to Atmosphères.  Perfectly logical then to follow Sinfonia with Ligeti's Poème symphonique where 100 metronomes tick, each in slightly different ways. Ligeti's playing with time, and measures of time : the principles of music, where his "players" are usually the means by which music is regulated. More quirky humour ! In a long concert like this, it gave the regular orchestra a rest while the audience worked. If they understood, which they probably did since it's quite a well known piece. Again, proof that music exists in many forms ! Thus Widmann's Fantasie for solo clarinet, heard in March this year at the opening concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. The Paris Philharmonie is a much bigger space, but the piece adapted well,  as if the sound of the clarinet were moving around the hall, reaching out into its distances. If anything, I much preferred this new spatial dimension. It makes the piece intriguing, as if the instrument were exploring and responding to its environment.  Like shepherds of Ancient Greece, playing flutes whose sound carries over vast spaces.  Another connection to the themes in Berio's Sinfonia.  

Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, another hybrid form, blending the form of ritual religious music to orchestral style, at once ancient and modern.  It also combines orchestra with choir (the Choir of the Orchestre de Paris, Choirmaster Lionel Sow).  The ideas in Berio's Sinfonia again, but with the unmistakable austerity that would mark Stravinsky's later style. Huge blocks of sound, hewn as if from a rockface, yet moving forward with slow but monumental pace.  Stravinsky, Berio and Debussy, three very different composers but each creating new form.   In contrast,  Jörg Widmann's  Au cœur de Paris written for the orchestra's 50th birthday. It's a party piece,  tumbling different clichés of Paris together in merry profusion.  Yet another nod to Berio and his sense of humour ! 

Listen to the concert here (available for the next six months)

 

Jörg Widmann Berlin Birmingham and Brahms, too

Jörg Widmann at the Staatsoper Berlin on Wednesday and at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on Thursday.   In Berlin, Daniel Barenboim conducted Widmann's Zweites Labyrinth (2006) and in Birmingham Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducted his Babylon Suite , based on Widmann's opera Babylon (2012), the suite premiered earlier this year by Daniel Harding at the Philharmonie, Paris.  Widmann was also the soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in Birmingham. The man gets around ! Proof that new music fits in fine with the mainstream.

Widmann's Zweites Labyrinth für Orchestergruppen is the second in a series of three explorations where sound creates mazes.  In a labyrinth you find your way through by trial and error, picking up clues along the way.  Zweites Labyrrinth poses puzzles - inventive, cryptic sounds  which intrigue because you can't quite place them.  Two very different types of cimbalom (Hungarian and Ukrainian), an archaic guitar with a very wide body, a zither, and conventional instruments used in highly unorthodox ways to throw you off track.  The instruments with strings overlap with the instruments for wind, so even the "groups" interchange. .The guitar is beaten so the resonance in its body sings as if it were a primitive wind. The piccolos are tapped so sounds vibrate in curious patterns.  Confusing, yet very  rewarding, since the piece is constructed with the elegant symmetry of a good labyrinth.  Also delightful - the guitarist/zitherist looked like Helmut Lachenmann !  Also on the Berlin programme, Maurizio Pollini playing Schumann Piano Concerto A moll Op 54 and an extremely fine Debussy's Images for orchestra.  

 In contrast, Widmann's Babylon Suite which, distilling a much larger work, is necessarily more episodic, probably reflecting what happens in the opera.  Apparently, the opera deals with opulence and excess, and the defeat of an empire.  Thus the snatches of melody, half formed and decontructed, fragments salvaged from a greater whole.  Huge arcs in the orchestration like giant walls built of myriad cells, and delicate passages where solo winds sing, surrounded by a mist of strings.  Though there are "obvious" passages like a jaunty military band, Widmann's Babylon Siuite isn't pictorial so much as a collage of multiple impressions in profusion. Just like Babylon itself, before it imploded.  

Widmann is news, but the CBSO's Brahms Symphony no 1 was so good that it was headline, too.  A superb performance, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla , bringing out the richness in the piece. Almost inevitably Beethoven pops up whenever this symphony is discussed but it is distinctively Brahms.   Grandeur, yes, and certainly in this confident and expansive performance. But Brahmsian signatures, too, like the recurring melody and even the suggestion of chorale.  Schumann, too, hovers over  the piece with probably even more personal significance.  

Pierre Boulez Saal opening concert : Schubert Der Hirt auf dem Felsen

The Opening Concert  of the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin's new hall for chamber recitals.  Daniel Barenboim  did the honours in the Mozart Piano Quartet KV 493, with his son, Michael, the violinist, beside him.  No way would a concert as significant as this have been  complete without a star like Barenboim.  The invisible star, nonetheless was Pierre Boulez, for whom the hall is named. Fittingly, the concert began and ended with Boulez: Initiale initiating proceedings, with Sur Incises as the grand highlight. Both pieces also demonstrated the acoustic and flexibility of this new hall.  It's more than a recital hall, since it can be adapted for larger ensembles and even, potentially, for chamber opera.  Seating seems generous, so backstage facilities might also be of the same high standard.  Coffin-shaped concert halls are dead.  London, wake up!

Barenboim will also be remembered for posterity because he nurtures young musicians, just as he himself was nurtured when he was a child prodigy. It was good to hear Karim Said, whom Barenboim has mentored since childhood. Please see my article Why we need  to know who Karim Said Is from 2008. Said has matured nicely. He was the soloist in Alban Berg's Kammerkonzert for piano, violin and thirteen winds, with Barenboim as conductor. Later, Said was the lead pianist in Sur Incises.  Jörg Widmann appeared, both as clarinettist and as composer, performing his own Fantasie. The whole concert can be heard on repeat here, a good idea since you can fast forward past the inordinately long breaks between pieces.   You can see who's in the audience, too - Simon Rattle. 

Being a Lieder person,  I was keen to hear Schubert Der Hirt auf dem Felsen D 965 with  Barenboim, Widmann  and the incomparable Anna Prohaska.  Pauline Anna Milder-Hauptmann, the celebrity coloratura of her day, wanted a showpiece that would test her range and artistry. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is a challenge, even for the finest performers.  The piano part is dense, "rock-like" in its complexity, and the clarinet part equally daunting. But the soprano is the star. The piece runs for twelve minutes, connecting three different poems (Wilhelm Müller and Karl August Vernhagen).  Schubert's setting replicates the imagery in the first poem,  Müller's Der Berghirt, whiuch describes a young shepherd, sitting high on a rock on a mountain, looking down on the valley below, where his beloved lives, far away. Thus the extremes of height and depth,the soprano's voice soaring upwards, while the clarinet's lower register floats seductively around her, sometimes in duet.

In the early part of the 19th century, there was a craze for "Alpine" music connecting the Romantic concepts of Nature, purity and freedom with picturesque mountain scenery and peasant simplicity.   Weber's Der Freischütz premiered in 1821 and Rossini's William Tell in 1829, the year after Schubert wrote this remarkable song. Tragically, it was his last completed work., but it might indicate how Schubert might have progressed had he survived.  Later in the century,"Alpine opera", such as La Wally came into vogue.   Strauss and Mahler wrote music in which mountains appear, figuratively. Indeed,  the whole genre of Bergfilm is an adaptation of the style. Lots on this site about mountains in music and Bergfilme.

Although the soprano in Der Hirt auf dem Felsen certainly does not yodel, the idea of a song designed to carry over long distances applies, and requires good breath control (as do pan pipes and Alpenhorn), Milder-Hauptmann and Schubert no doubt realized the piece would be a tour de force.   Prohaska was wonderful, singing with mellifluous grace.  Her words rang clear and true.

"Je weiter meine Stimme dringt,
Je heller sie mir wieder klingt
Von unten".  

In the last section, Prohaska's voice trilled deliciousl, .duetting with Widmann's clarinet. Tricky phrasing, but joyously agile, like a mountain spirit. 

"Der Frühling will kommen,
Der Frühling, meine Freud',
Nun mach' ich mich fertig
Zum Wandern bereit"

It might seem trivial, but I loved the outfit Prohaska wore: cropped trousers, knee-high boots and a long jacket.  Very elegant, yet also reminiscent of a 19th century traveller, a poet or a wanderer.