Thielemann Staatskapelle Dresden Prom 72 Reger Strauss Beethoven

The ghosts of history hung palpably above Prom 72 at the Royal Albert Hall, London.  Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden presented a programme that began with Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major with Nikolaj Znaider, and concluded with an even more intriguing pairing:  Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a theme by Mozart (Op 132, 1914) and Richard Strauss Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche Op 28 (1895).  This combination tells us much more about Thielemann and the musical credentials of the Staatskapelle Dresden than yet another predictable rehash of the Mozart/Bruckner  mini series which has so fixated the media this week.  The Staatskapelle Dresden was founded in 1548, a bit earlier than the Berlin Staatskapelle (1570), and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester (1748) . A very special perspective. 

Yet again, Reger's Mozart Variations are not rare even if the BBC doesn't seem to know. Reger doesn't need to be discovered - British audiences just need to think in wider European terms.  Fritz Busch, who  conducted the Staatskapelle from 1922 to 1933, made the first recordings of Reger's Mozart Variations in 1920, when it was "new music" and again in 1944, 1949 and 1951, though not with Dresden orchestras.  Karl Böhm, who succeeded Busch, recorded the Mozart Variations with the Staatskapelle Dresden in 1938, and later with the Berlin Philharmonic.  More recently, Jörg-Peter Weigle recorded it with the Dresden Philharmonic, not quite as ancient or as illustrious as the Staatskapelle.  Keilberth, too, who recorded Reger in Bamberg,was also a chief of the Staaatskapelle.

Thus Thielemann connects to a long-standing association between Dresden and Reger. But a tradition revived afresh and reinvigorated.  The opening theme in Reger's Mozart Variations derives from Mozart's Piano Sonata No 11, which itself incorporates variations on a basic concept. Thus Thielemann and the Dresdeners presented it with lucid elegance, emphasizing the intricate proliferation of variation upon variation.  Reger writes with the elaboration favoured by very late 19th century composers, but it's a mistake to assume the piece is Hollywood-style treacle. It's based on Mozart, afetr all ! Romanticism was not "romantic"  and in any case Reger was writing in an era informed by the exoticism of Jugendstil.  Thielemann thus demonstrates  how the textures can shine when sharply defined, so the colours glow as if from the music itself, as they should.  Reger may not be as original as Korngold, Schreker and Zemlinsky, but like them, he was heading forwards, not back.  As Thielemann and the Dresdeners played, I thought of Dresden itself, and the Zwinger, an exquisite roccoco gem which seems to epitomize the ideals of civilized balance.

Unfortunately we know how quickly ideals can be destroyed by mindless mass hysteria.  Thielemann has been excoriated for having said "Wir müssen auf die Fragen hören" when Pergida raised its ugly head in Dresden. That was back in early 2015. Now that populist extremism is proliferating all over the world, to confront it we need to learn.  Mob think thrives on non-knowledge, so it's worth checking at source.  Read in Die Zeit what Thielemann actually said, Text HERE. The "Refugees Welcome" movement now gathering pace also had its origins in Dresden.  

The Staatskapelle, in its home at the Semperoper, has also been closely connected with the development of German opera. Richard Wagner started out at what was then the Hofoper. Richard Strauss is even more closely associated with Dresden. Nine Strauss operas premiered here, including Der Rosenkavalier (Vienna only later).  The Alpine Symphony, though premiered in Berlin, was performed there by the Dresden Hofkapelle, to whom it was dedicated.  Including Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche  at this Prom proved a point, quietly. Till Eulenspeigel is a cheeky prankster, and the Dresdeners performed it with charm.  Typical Richard Strauss irreverent humour.  For Till is dangerous. He overturns conventional order and gets hanged.  Thielemann and the Dresdeners know Strauss well enough to realize why the clarinet supersedes the horn. The horn is , well, Wunderhornish, representing folk tradition, while the clarinet's exaggerated howls parody the idea of funeral march. We might laugh, but underneath Strauss's merry jokes lurk darker ironies.  A genuinely idiomatic performance, done with a stylishly nonchalant air, true to the soul of Richard Strauss.  

This Prom began with Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major with Nikolaj Znaider, which the Dresden Staatskapelle is featuring this season. A performance which I enjoyed well enough, and which was received with rapturous applause by the Royal Albert Hall audience.   .   

Photos top and middle, Staatskapelle Dresden; lower, Roger Thomas

Johan Botha has died, and with him a piece of my heart

Johan Botha died this morning in Vienna, of cancer, aged only 51. And with him dies a big part oif my heart.  Botha will be irreplacable: an extraordinarily gifted singer whose voice could create roles with depth and emotional accuracy. Among his finest roles was Tannhäuser, were he lifted a dull production at the Royal Opera House up into the stratosphere with the glory of his singing. The photo above comes from that time, copyright Clive Barda 2010.  Botha wasn't in the revival this summer, and maybe now we know why.  Tannhäuser  is an anti-hero, a man who has experienced the wildest excesses, yet cannot settle for conventional propriety. He'd rather go back to Venusberg and its dissipation than play the holy knight game.  When Botha sang the part, he expressed the beauty of Tannhäuser's ravaged soul, showing the true heroism in his character.  That's why Elisabeth chose him over Wolfram.  Despite the transformational wonder of Botha's singing, there were some who sneered, thinking Elisabeth chose the wrong guy because he wasn't pretty. But what is the whole point of Tannhäuser ? Evidently Wagner is completely wasted on those who insist that opera should stick to literal realism.  Botha acted with his voice : a pity some don't get it, that opera is about feelings and ideas, not imitation TV.  Goodbye Johan Botha, an artist who sang the truth.

Gergiev Ustvolskaya Shostakovich Berlin Musikfest

At the Musikfest Berlin, Valery Gergiev conducted the Münchner Philharmoniker in Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 "Jesus Messaih, save us!" with Shostakovich Symphony no 4. A musically astute programme, much wiser that the odd ragbag Gergiev and the Müncheners had to do at thr Proms in July where Ustvolskaya's remarkable piece was buried in crowd-pleasing Strauss and Rachmaninoff.   Ustvolskaya's piece is powerful but forbidding and really  needs to be heard in proper context, not submerged in the ragbag mix the Proms inflicted on Gergiev. In Berlin, he could give Ustvolskya the prominence her music deserves, and present it in proper context. Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) was an outsider, her career so restrained that, in comparison, Shostakovich was almost a matinee idol. But as this symphony shows, isolation intensified her originality.  The power of this work lies in its emotional honesty,  built on the foundations of unshakeable faith.  

Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 Jesus Messiah, save us!  is based on the life of an 11th-century monk, Hermann of Reichenau, aka "Hermann the cripple" who was born with so many birth defects that he lived in constant pain and had difficulty speaking. Nonetheless, he became a theologian, an astronomer, a mathematician and wrote a treatise on the science of music. He lived to age 44, ancient by the standards of the time and was canonized in 1863. A paralyzed musician without a voice? What a metaphor for a composer in the Soviet era!  

Not for nothing, Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 evolves from a single, unaccompanied voice.  Alexei Petrenko (pictured with Gergiev at the Proms performance) intones the text with uncompromising gravity, as if his voice has materialized from an ancient past.  Thus the austerity of the orchestration, and the utterly uncompromising nature of the work, closer to Orthodox traditions than to medieval Europe.  The instruments operate in tight units: five basses, five trumpets, five oboes, three tubas, three percussion desks, with large timpani and smaller, militaristic drums.  Thus a sense of ritual, a sense of unshakeable austerity, pitting the solo voice against small but strong forces. The piano mediates, sometimes supporting the idea of a wayward individual, yet also employed as percussion, with  long drawn sequences of ostinato, a lone trombone wailing balefully long lines against the piano's firm "footsteps".  "Save us, save us" Petrenko whispers, (in Russian) his eyes raised upwards, as if listening for a sign, as the music quickly dissipates into silence. 

Whether or not Shostakovich compromised with the Stalinist regime, he managed to balance on the edge. Ustvolskaya wasn't sent to Siberia, but seems to have struggled on in a kind of external exile. Shostakoviuch dominates to such an extent that it masks the originality of Ustvolskaya's idiom. She and Shostakovich didn't get on for various reasons. In any case, the integrity in her music comes from very deep sources. Thus she's closer to Stravinsky and the "primitivism" of the Rite of Spring,  and to the brief explosion of modernity which flourished in the early years after the Revolution, and produced works like Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry (1925-6)   Ustvolskaya's music even connects  to the fierce awkwardness of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass, and indeed to Messiaen's ground-breaking masterpieces like Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Boulez was a great interpreter of Stravinsky, Janáček and Messiaen, so his disdain for Shostakovich needs to be appreciated in context.  Maybe one day, when modern music is better understood, we can see things from a wider perspective.  Follow this link HERE to a discussion of  Ustvolskaya, her place in Soviet music and her relation to Shostakovich.  Also, this excellent documentary, made when Ustvolskya was, at last, being valued for her own sake. She was nearly 90 when the film was made but her mind is sharp. She knows who Reinbert de Leeuw is and what he stands for. 

With Gergiev's championship of Ustvolskaya, perhaps now her time has come.  She was famously sniffy about some Soviet-era performances of her work, and with good reason, from what I've heard,  but Gergiev is sophisticated enough to get it.  Even though Gergiev turned up nearly 20 minutes late, not at all long by his track record, as soon as he reached the stage he snapped into form.  Extremely tightly focussed, a performance informed by the same kind of mental and emotional discipline Ustvolskaya insisted upon. This Berlin performance was so much stronger that the London performance seemed sloppy in comparison. Catch it on The Digital Concert Hall when it's rebroadcast in a few days.  Gergiev is unpredictable. When he's bad, he's very bad but when he's good, he's very good. The skill of a listener is to recognize which is which.  

Gergiev has been conducting Shostakovich forever, hardly surprising, since the composer, who once had to compromise with the Soviets, is now thoroughly mainstream.  So this Shostakovich Symphony no 4 was rewarding, since Gergiev knows it like the back of his hand.  The interest, this time round, was his relationship with the Münchner Philharmoniker,  whose Chief Conductor he's become. The Munich Philharmonc is quite different from the London Symphony Orchestra, which Gergiev headed for ten years.  So far, so good.  I like the sound. Though Gergiev will conduct regularly in Munich, he'll still be based in London, where airline connections are better than in Munich, so he can commute between his various bases in oligarch enclaves all over the world.  
 

Contrasting Figures Julian Anderson Bayan Northcott

Contrasting figures, two very different premieres at the Proms.: Julian Anderson's Incantesimi and Bayan Northcott's   Concerto for Orchestra.  Both composers are big names in British music. Northcott's new work is more ambitious in scale, and impressive as a study of large forces. It seems tailor made for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, reminiscent of standard orchestral fare, big on full-bodied tutti and brass effects, lovely, rippling passages for winds.  A good and worthy piece, though I suspect it needs a more dynamic performance.  Please read the review in 5:4, a very good site on new music, which I wish ran year round rather than just in summer.   "The work comports itself in a conflicted way, on the one hand sounding laboured and stylistically somewhat dated (a sort of ‘post-neo-romanticism’ if you’ll forgive the construction; think Walton with plenty of late 20th century twists), yet with a stream of invention sufficiently cogent to lend it a veneer of freshness. Considering this is Northcott’s first work for orchestra, it displays an impressive combination of complexity and clarity, although many of the ideas could do with a bit less stodge (making it sound as though the conductor is stirring treacle). A little over halfway through it attains a climax that’s made up of many elements; it’s a really nice moment, enhanced by the orchestra’s subsequent enigmatic withdrawal into the middleground. This, and the work’s more pensive episodes, are by far the most immersive; Northcott’s faster music (which dominates overall) feels shallow by comparison, and the abrupt end is an entirely unconvincing cop-out, But notwithstanding these difficulties, plus the fact that it’s not really a concerto for orchestra at all, more a symphonic poem, the piece makes for an interesting enough diversion."

All music is "abstract" in the sense that sounds aren't as explicit as words, and even text can be elusive.  Thomas Larcher's Symphony no 2 "Cenotaph" might have initially been inspired by images of Syrian refugees, but that doesn't at all mean that the music is literal, in any way.  Like Strauss's Alpine Symphony, programmes are like scaffolding, useful as an aid to construction. What really counts is the building itself.  Please read here what I wrote about Larcher and Strauss, and on the programmatic structure.   In any case, music is processed by human minds, so it's not possible to  experience  listening without some human input: what one hears depends on an individual's emotional range, expectations and experience.

And so to Julian Anderson's Incantesimi.. commissioned for Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker.  In theory this piece was inspired by an orrery, a multi-dimensional creation designed to demonstrate the movements and interactions of planets in the universe, each with their different orbits and speeds of  traverse. Science, thus, abstract concepts made visible, helping ordinary people understand the universe. Anderson has always been a remarkably "visual" composer : some people just are. But that doesn't mean that his music is literal.  Anderson describes the five elements in his piece as a Nocturne which has five musical ideas juggled in perpetual motion, interacting but never all at the same time. "Instead of being an outward display of flamboyance, it's an inward display of lyrical qualities and calm meditation, like Giant Chamber Music".

 Thus the growling lower registers from which clean, clear lines emerge. A cor anglais solo, then.  Exquisite, glittering, fragmenting sounds. All held together by a sense of circular movement, shifts in volume and tempi, highlighted by sudden single bell-like chords, then percussion and high winds.  On the re-broadcast, the announcer says the percussive clicks represent a Japanese night watchman signalling all is well. Nuts, I thought. Nightwatchmen exist even outside Japan. If there's extra-musical reference here, consider the Nightwatchman in Die Meistersinger, who signals the restoration of order on chaos, hence the elegant structure of the piece.  Much more than a tone poem, it's a mini symphony in less than 15 minutes, totally to the point.  I hadn't heard Anderson's comments before listening, so I was delighted that I'd guessed the idea without having to be told. Anderson's Incantesimi. is definitely a keeper, proof that good, original new music can appeal without dumbing down or being elitist. Fascinating, imaginative and really quite magical.

Alberich not! Secrets of really creative people

"Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn?" Hagen is asleep, but Toxic Dad invades his mind, controlling him from beyond the grave (assuming Alberich is dead, which is unlikely).  Hagen has no beef with Siegfried but a billion resentments agaist Gunther and Gutrune who have by rights what Hagen has not.  So Toxic Dad worms his way into Hagen's subconscious. "Hasse die Frohen! Mich Lustfreien, Leidbelasteten liebst du so, wie du sollst! ".  Alberich, the ultimate non-creative person who can only cheat and steal.

What are the secrets of genuinely creative people? Just now a friend sent me an image from source I'd like to reproduce but can't. So here's the gist of it, and many thanks to whoever did it in the first place.  Seeing it made me so happy ! And by sharing, maybe I can make others happy, too.

Visualize two poles. Creative People and Non-creative.

C's compliment. Non-c's criticize

C's talk about ideas. Non-c's talk about people
 
C's embrace change. Non-c's fear change

C's learn, continuously. Non-c's know everything, always

C's accept responsibility for their own failures.  Non-c's blame others

C's have a sense of gratitude for their blessings. Non-c's wallow in entitlement. 

Will Hagen be c or non c ?  Will he "Hasse die Frohen!" like Toxic Dad ?  Siegfried's no hero because he can't think past his own needs. For Wagner, the real hero of the Ring is Brünnhilde who returns to the Rhinemaidens what Alberich stole. 

Musikfest Berlin 2016 Wolfgang Rihm Tutuguri

As the BBC Proms at last flicker into life, in Germany the Musikfest Berlin gets under way.. Over 19 days, 27 events featuring 70 works of around 35 composers, performed by 20 orchestras, instrumental and vocal ensembles and soloists. Full programme here, reflecting the concept that audiences are mature enough to handle real music, as Sir Henry Wood believed a hundred years ago, instead of the Potato Fudge the Proms have descended into this year (bar a few outstanding performances). But those of us who can't get to Berlin (largely sold out, in any case), some concerts will be broadcast via the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall (List here) 

Listen live, because the broadcasts may be available for only 24 hours. On Saturday I caught Wolfgang Rihm's  Tutuguri with Daniel Harding and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.  This piece is legend, but not easy to pull off because it requires a huge orchestra, a whole row of percussion desks and elaborate off-stage effects   Rihm's  model for Tutuguri was a piece by  by Antonin Artaud, the actor and theatre theorist whose ideas have great influence on modern theatre, film, dance and music. Artaud believed that communication could exist on multiple levels.  Texts don't have to be spoken, nor even rational.  In Tutuguri, the soloist and invisible choir (on tape)  utter sounds in single syllable bursts of staccato, which don't have meaning in themselves: it's up to the audience to intuit the connections themselves.  If, of course, there "is" any meaning we can deduce. Artaud was fascinated by primal states of experience that cannot be articulated - hence the animalistic grunts and piercing screams. Orchestra and singers all on the same communal level.  Rihm's use of percussion is absolutely deliberate. because percussion reflects the rhythms of the human body, heartbeats, breathing, movement. This performance was exceptionally  muscular and physical, yet mesmerizing just as the rite it (sort of) describes would have been.  Savage as the subject may be, performance needs to be accurate and extremely tightly focussed or the whole point is missed.  This performance was so powerful that it far eclipsed Kent Nagano and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at  the Barbican last year (read my piece here).  The narrator,  Graham Forbes Valentine, who bore a disconcerting resemblance to Artaud, was so forceful that he seemed possessed, the tightness of his articulation like an elemental force oif nature. Luckily I was able to watch it through before Digital Concert Hall pulled it.  Explains why I'm too tired to write about Rossini Semiramide at the Proms, which I loved. 

So don't miss the next livestream on Tuesday 6/9 when Valery Gergiev conducts the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in Shostakovich Symphony no 4 and Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3  "Jesus Messiah, save us", which I wrote about  in July HERE.  A striking piece I can't wait to hear again. 

Ivan Fischer and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin on 8/9 with Hans Werner Henze I vitalino raddoppiato for violin (Julia Fischer) and chamber orchestra. A beautifully expressive piece which could easily stand up to Bruckner 7, which I heard last week with Haitink and RCOA livestreamed from Amsterdam.

Andris Nelsons conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker on  Saturday 10th in Debussy Prélude à lʼaprès-midi dʼun faune,  Edgard Varèse Arcana and Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. An intelligent programme presented, no doubt, with flair and extremely high musical standards.

More Varèse (Déserts) and Ligeti (Violin Concerto, Pekka Kuuisto) the next day with Jonathan Nott and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie , followed by Beethoven 3 Eroica. 

Then Dudamel Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie.  I heard this a few months back, but it's really for fans of the conductor rather than fans of the music.

Kirill Petrenko conducts the Bayerisches Staatsorchester on 14/9 in Ligeti Lontano, Bartók Violin Concero no 1 (Frank Peter Zimmermann)  and Richard Strauss Sinfonia domestica.  Good combination, should be good.  

Then John Adams conducts an all John Adams concert on 17/9.

Boulez Bartok Carter Prom 65 Ensemble Intercontemporain

My companion attended some of Boulez's first Proms in 1965 and 1966 (including the UK premiere of Éclat on 2 September 1966), and still keeps the original programme booklets.  So Prom 65: Bartók, Carter and Boulez with Baldur Brönnimann, Ensemble Intercontemporain and the BBC Singers was a special occasion.  An atmospheric Prom, the lights in the Royal Albert Hall dimmed in darkness, spotlighting the music, and the musicians. As things should be! For music is what some of us care about above all else, however media opinion might differ.  Late night Proms have a unique atmosphere, drawing out audiences who care enough about what they listen to that they'd gladly stick around til after midnight and miss the last bus or train home to be there.  Besides, smaller-scale music like this needs to be heard in surroundings more conducive to thoughtful listening than in mass-rally conditions.

Baldur Brönnimann and Ensemble Intercontemporain are, fortunately, regular enough visitors to London that they feel like family.  They all knew Boulez, personally, too, a factor which added extra poignancy, but the high standards of these performances proved that his legacy lives on.

Bartók's Three Village Scenes (1926) at the beginning, for good reason. Modern music isn't an aberration that began with Boulez, as some think these days, evidently unaware of Schoenberg, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel and many others.  What all these "modernists" have in common is an affinity for approaches other than that of the late 19th century Austro-German tradition.  Bartók's immersion in Hungarian folk idiom  helped him find his unique voice.  His avant garde expressiveness stemmed from far deeper roots.  In Three Village Scenes, the BBC Singers sang with crisp articulation. I have no idea whether their diction was properly Hungarian or not, and don't care. What mattered was the sharpness of intonation, a  group of individual voices operating as a tight unit.  The orchestra came into focus in the second movement, Ukoliebavka, where a single voice intones a plaintive lullaby.  Here, Bartók's individuality - and modernity - palpably present in the shifting, tonally ambiguous forces swirling round her voice.  In Tanec mladencov, the sound of ancient instruments was invoked in new form.  Vigorous rhythms, jerky angular lines, vibrant energy.  

And so to Boulez Anthèmes 2 with Jeanne-Marie Conquer, the soloist par excellence in this piece which she has made her own, having performed it so many times, conducted by Boulez himself..   Although Boulez founded IRCAM  enabling whole new generations of composers to explore the possibilities of microtonality and more, Anthèmes 2 is one of the relatively few pieces he wrote that incorporates electronic sound.  I heard Boulez and Conquer do this piece live at Aldeburgh in 2010 at The Maltings, Snape, so was particularly keen to hear how the dynamic changed. Unsurprisngly it worked better, since the electronics bounced over the cavernous acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall, the  sound stretching for much greater distances than they ever could in the small, boxlike Maltings. Although the electronic effects are created by technology, the sound is "played" by human beings. The sound desk people are musicians responding to the violin, adapting and adjusting.   

Anthèmes 2 is a dialogue on many different levels.  Boulez said that, as a child, he was fascinated by the call and response of the Catholic Mass, by the use of archaic language and by the sense of ancient times co-existing with the present.  As Conquer played, the sound of her violin projected into the vast expanse of the RAH, enhanced so that it seemed to reach out to the upper galleries, and into the dome, deflecting back to the platform, the sound then taken up and transformed by the electronics. Since each of the six sections are so varied, getting this dynamic flow was quite some achievement. Magical, a haunting experience with profound emotional impact.

More "dialogue", with Elliott Carter's Penthode (1984-5) since Boulez and Carter were extremely close friends, bouncing symbiotically off one another.  Carter constructed Penthode like a mathematical theorem, employing five groups of four instruments, in unusual combinations, like  bassoon, piano, percussion and viola. The cells thus interact with each other to form the "orchestra".  The piece is thus both a deconstruction of the idea of an orchestra yet also a reworking of the fundamental idea of playing in harmony, without the actual  use of harmony.  Brönnimann and Ensemble Intercontemporain make Penthode sound easy, though it's not. Players have to listen acutely to one another, each a soloist in his and her own right. No going with the flow and hiding behind a large group, as can happen in lesser ensembles.  

In his poetry, E E Cummings defied conventional concepts of language: words deconstruct into fragments, and meaning comes from the visual impression of text across the page. Blank areas "speak", an idea that translates well into music.  Thus the very configuration of the forces Boulez employs in Cummings ist der Dichter : a small chorus, but one divided into 16 parts, the BBC Singers making the music flow across the line in the way that Cummings uses single characters of the alphabet sliding over the page.  Lines elide, the orchestral lines stretching in arching swathes  and oscillating flurries.  "Birds here, inventing air", Cummings writes in his bizarre,  inventive way, making you pay attention and observe.  "Pay attention and observe", a mantra which could also apply to Boulez.   Do we hear in this music the movement of birds, as we might in Messiaen ? I don't know, or care, because the experience of being alert and acutely sensitive to nuance is even more fundamental.

Listen to the re-broadcast here. The commentary is vacuous cliché, but the interviews, with members of the ensemble and singers, are enlightening.

Bottom two photos: Roger Thomas

Mahler Symphony no 7 Rattle Berlin Philharmonic Boulez Prom

Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in Prom 64 at the Royal Albert Hall.  Mahler Symphony no 7 and Boulez Éclat (1965) a musically judicious pairing that enhances both works. But first the newsworthy bit!  Lines round the block at the Royal Albert Hall, the hottest ticket in town.  . Rattle is a National Treasure, as the Japanese honour people who've changed the world around them.  Rattle transformed the CBSO and galvanized British music as a whole. He championed music we now take for granted as mainstream, but wasn't 35 years ago.  He's an amazing communicator, his enthusiasm motivated by love. As Claudio Abbado said "What  drives me is the love of my job, and the passion for things I find inspiring, when I get a chance to immerse myself , to deepen my knowledge of a score, or a book.......if I can deepen that knowledge, I will always do so...  the starting point is always love".  Very different conductors, but the same basic motivation, one which uncreative minds often do not comprehend.

The equivocal nature of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony makes interpretation elusive.  Clues are embedded in the orchestration, so for listeners, as well as for performers, it's a test of sensitivity and musical nous.  If a "symphony contains the world", why not? This isn't a piece where “received wisdom” has any place.  The tuba calls, then the winds and smaller brass, and the symphony gets underway with the figures inspired by the sound of oars rowing across a lake.  Stillness, yet also a sense of purposeful forward thrust.  Though there are chords which scream turbulence, the mood is "risoluto", resolutely unperturbed.  Here, the finesse of the Berlin Philharmonic paid dividends. It takes skill to hold a coherent line and shape it so well.   When the tuba returned, strings glistening around it, I felt as if the symphony was somehow expressing movement in time, past, present and future seamlessly together. Hence the silvery trumpets calling us forwards.

The famous horn call with which the first Nachtmusik  begins was suitably expansive, but I was fascinated, too, by the way the Berliners can do subtle detail: quiet bowing and plucking, suggesting mystery, images half-heard, half felt as if hidden in darkness.  At night, the subconscious is released and thoughts run free.  Hence the Scherzo, often described as a nightmare parody of a waltz.  Rattle and the Berliners don't need to scream out "spooks". Instead a quiet violin suggesting a quirky loner, but not a madman, since the part is too integrated to represent  selfish ego.

An important insight, since the very structure of this symphony suggests equanimity not psychosis.   The two Nachtmusiks surround the Scherzo, like oars around a boat,  firmly keep it afloat, reaffirming the sense of duality in the symphony throughout.   In the second Nachtmusik, the concept is furthered by the pairing of mandolin and guitar, referring to troubadours serenading  lovers, possibly unseen in the night.  In many ways, this gentle movement is the human heart of the symphony and the clue to the real soul of Mahler, so often missed these days by notions that Mahler should be loud and neurotic.  Rarely have I heard the final passages on clarinet so well defined, oscillating with haunting magic.  Horns and tubas may grab attention, but these tiny, fragile moments are, in this interpretation, the heart of the symphony.  When the Rondo Finale bursts forth after this stillness, the contrast is shocking, but that, too, I think, is evidence of the subtlety of Mahler's mind and of the idea of hidden mystery that makes this symphony so intriguing.  The sudden switch might be Mahler's way of hiding his sensitivity from the world, much in the way people joke about things that hurt, deflecting attention.

Donald Mitchell wrote of the Rondo-Finale that “the violent, unprepared contrast is akin to parting the curtains in a dark room and finding oneself dazzled by brilliant sunlight”.  Perhaps the sudden glare drives away fear, but not, I think, what we've learned from the ambiguities of the night.  The brass are back, timpani and percussion pound and the orchestra erupts in full flow. A delicious flourish, then an adamant cutting off.What to make of this miniature at the end of a long(ish) symphony? Is it a wail of thwarted rage, or is it a last, sardonic laugh, suggesting the triumph of life?  From what we now know of Mahler the man and composer, I'm inclined to go with Rattle's life-affirming confidence.

And back to Boulez Éclat with which the programme began. It uses only 15 instruments, and lasts  eleven minutes.  Not actually so very different from Mahler, who used large ensembles but created music of chamber-like clarity.  Furthermore, Boulez employs guitar and mandolin, just as Mahler did, with piano, celeste, and  vibraphone. For me, the connection between the two pieces lies also in the way they  explore ambiguities and planes of sound, turning suddenly as if the music itself were a living organism.  Éclat shimmers with beautiful lines,bell-like oscillations suggesting purity and freshness,  the lines always alert to transformative change.   It's mysterious, too, exploring its way through sound.  Boulez learned, from Messaien, how to observe quietly, without rushing to impose judgement. In Éclat, we can sense thoughtful observation, as if Boulez were drawing his ideas from watching the movement of birds.  An immensely delicate piece, but with parallels to the contemplative passages in Mahler 7 and its mood of secret mystery.

I first heard Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic do this programme in the Philharmonie, where the acoustic is better than in the Royal Albert Hall, even if the Proms atmosphere is more electric.   At the Prom, the final movement had maximum impact, so devastating it might have lifted the roof. If the more subtle detail (like the clarinet at the end of Nachtmusik II), was lost,  no-one's going to forget that Finale! A friend sent me a video of the applause, shot from way above the stage. Six thousand people clapping and stomping their feet in unison.  Later, I listened again and caught Rattle's short interview about the connections between  Éclat and Mahler 7th. Very revealing, perceptive, and definitely worth hearing. 

Please also read :
Poetic Thoughts : Mahler Symphony no 8 Chailly, Lucerne Festival
Spiritual Mahler 3 Haitink Proms
Blazingly relevant : Mahler 1 Salonen Proms

Berge in Flammen : Mountains in flames

Berge in Flammen, Mountains on Fire -  Bergfilm, art film, and war film, conceived and directed By Luis Trenker (1892-1990).  You'd think, from English language media, that 1914-1918 happened only on the western front. Not so! Millions died on the eastern front and in the south, in the Alps. All the more reason for watching Berge in Flammen, set in the Dolomites during the war of attrition that ran almost non stop from 1915 to 1917.  Imagine, trenches in mountains way above the snowline,dug into permafrost, cut off from supply lines.

Largely filmed on location,  the camera crew were themselves  skilled mountaineers - some of these shots would have been technically difficult to carry off.  Yet Berge in Flammen is an astonishingly beautiful film, a symphony of high peaks, snowfields and rockwalls,  shot from dizzying, expressionist angles.  Nature as poetry, dwarfing the silly battles below.  Global warming and safety regulations probably mean that films like this can't be made again. In any case, the South Tyrol depicted here is largely memory, but that, too, is a reason for seeing this film and appreciating its message. Not for nothing is this film bilingual, and those involved in the making thereof, a mix of Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen and Italians. Very much the "can do" camaraderie of the mountains. Some of the camera crew were not only climbers but also actors.

An idyllic beginning. Florian Dimal (Luis Trenker) and Arthur Franchini (Luigi Serventi) help each other up a rockstack.  They're free climbing, using only ropes, no helmets, no fancy modern gear.  But in the valley below, the church bells ring, It's August 1914. Franz Josef, the Emperor, has announced war. Florian and Arthur end up on different sides. Fantastic shots of life in underground caves and trenches tunneled through metres of snow.  Rickety ladders up steep slopes. Constant bombardment and with that, rock falls. Not many "special effects" in this filming. When the men trek through snow up to their hips, they're not acting. Bergfilme audiences knew about mountains and the technical aspects of climbing . 

Machine guns on precipices, hand grenades thrown by men clinging to ledges. Barbed wire and frozen bodies.  A sentry goes snow blind in a storm, frozen to the sandbags he was guarding. At one stage an officer with binoculars watches the action. The man at his shoulder is shot by a sniper. The officer keeps talking, unaware that his companion is dead.  Soldiers scale vertical cliffs, using mechanical drills to place explosives or maximum damage.  It doesn't take much to set off an  avalanches .And avalanches happen all the time. Most Bergfilme include shots of skiers in mass formation, but those here are particularly impressive because the men wear white coats with hoods, moving like apparitions.  The snowfields on glaciers are as spectacular as the cliffs and peaks.

Meanwhile, Florian's village has been occupied by the Italians.  Florian's home is billeted but the soldiers friendly. "Farina!"  says an Italian. "Mehl" says Pia, Florian's wife.  Florian is sent out alone, in secret on reconnaissance.  But he can't stay.  Crawling back up to the summit, during an enemy barrage, he's shot at by his own men, though is saved. The fortress is dynamited :  the whole peak explodes.  Twenty years later, Florian and Arthur (from Rome) ascend the mountains again, over the old battlefield. A vista of the Twin peaks of the Dolomites. They sit happily, together, no need for words.  The soundtrack, incidentally is very good, as modern as the cinematography.  The composer was Giuseppe Becci.

Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony Prom 62 Northcott Mozart

Zemlinksy Lyric Symphony Prom 62, with Simone Young and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. But first, BBC researchers should wake up and realize that this symphony is NOT rare! There are numerous recordings, and many performances, including Salonen and Jurowski in London in recent years, and many others which I haven't written about.  Even three previous Proms performances.  Perpetuating the myth that the Lyric Symphony is a rarity is counter-productive because it fools audiences into accepting mediocrity when there are so many excellent performances to explore. This symphony is such a masterpiece that it's shameful how clichés have got in the way of insight.

Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony was written in 1926-7, at a time of groundbreaking creative change.  That the texts come from  Tagore is no accident. Tagore was a literary superstar, at a time when western culture was more open to change and alien influences than ever before.  The Exotic East represented new, unknown frontiers . Zemlinsky was doing what Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel had done before him, and also drawing on a long-standing German fascination with Asia.  Tagore was popular in progressive circles because his rejection of materialism ran counter to the values of a a western world that had been shaken to its foundations by war and revolution.  Embracing Tagore's spirituality was a kind of liberation. By using Tagore as the basis of this symphony, Zemlinsky is doing more than adopting pseudo-oriental exoticism. Zemlinsky used a large orchestra, rich with colour and texture, not to look backwards.  The ending does not represent resignation. "Ich halte meine Lampe in die Höhe, um dir auf deinen Weg zu leuchten". I hold my lamp up high to light you on your way.  Zemlinsky, like the Prince, is looking forwards, toward directions unknown. 

The Lyric Symphony deals with love, but it is by no means a romantic symphony: the protagonist move on, and apart. The Alma Mahler connection is also very much over-rated.  So beware of heavy-handed "romantic" interpretations, more suited to Hollywood than to a key work of the 20th century.  Just as Zemlinsky recognized the clear-sighted non-sentimentality in Tagore's texts, so too should performance be based on clarity and intellectual precision. Anthony Beaumont, the paramount Zemlinsky authority, without whose work Zemlinsky studies would be nowhere, wrote in his analysis of this symphony that “often the singers are engulfed in a dark forest of orchestral filigree work. In performance, the score requires Mozartian grace and precision. For all its abandon, this music reveals its true beauty and power only if performed with discipline and cool headed restraint”. 

Simone Young's approach to Zemlinsky will no doubt be praised because it meets audience expectations, some shaped by unidiomatic performances and by the kind of clichés the BBC regurgitates.  But audience expectations are fatal to art.  A good conductor should work from the score, to find new insight, even though these days some audiences don't want change so much as processed consumer product. Young's Zemlinsky is straightforward, earthbound, without much connection to the originality of the piece. The BBC SO is far too good an orchestra to "engulf" the soloists as Beaumont warned, though at this Prom the soloists, Siobhan Stagg and Christopher Maltman, could have done with more cover from the "forest".  Maltman was not on best form, his voice not quite lithe enough to finesse the trickier passages in the part.   While the female voice in this symphony portrays a very young girl,  youth itself is not enough.  Siobhan Stagg is very young, her voice pretty enough but rather shrill at times. The Girl she's singing is made of such strong stuff that the Prince knows he's met someone who will surpass him.  Nonetheless, Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony is such a wonder that those who liked this Prom would do well to  listen further, to Chailly and to Eschenbach, and pray that Salonen does it again with good soloists. 

Baiba Skride was the soloist in Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 in A major, K219, Turkish. Her  playing has personality, well suited to the quirky nature of the piece. Here the BBC SO shone, rising to Skride's agile enticements.

Throughout this Proms season, there have been odd mismatches between performers and repertoire,. Though Bayan Northcott's Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned for the BBC SO, is well within their natural territory, I felt it might need time to settle  It's a good piece with lots of interest, perhaps too much to absorb without many hearings, which hopefully it will receive. 

Mordwand ! Bychkov Alpine Symphony Strauss Larcher

Devastating Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie Op 64 from Semyon Bychkov at Prom 57, majestic yet menacing,  as if inspired by the Mordwand, the "murder wall", pictured above, the north face of the Eiger, which has defied so many who've dared try conquering it.  This was an Alpine Symphony to defy those who don't understand Strauss or his self-deprecating good humour.  "It is a life journey", said Bychov on the re-broadcast, "It's deeply existential, it starts with one coming into the world, travelling through all the things that happen in one's life and then in the end, going back into the night and going into the next existence, whatever it is.... It is something that invokes very powerful images and deals with the entire spectrum of the human condition. For us on the stage it is like living a life in the span of fifty minutes or so.  It is full of tension, it is relentless. The 22 episodes succeed each other, but if one can unite them into one arch, uninterrupted, it gives the feeling of  a journey. It's full of joy, it's full of drama, pain, of suffering - it's everything"

Eine Alpensinfonie a Heldenleben? Mountains as metaphors for life, a subject on which I've written extensively (follow link below on mountains)  Bychkov's strong-minded Strauss could be a companion piece to Mahler's Symphony no 3, which Bychkov has also conducted extremely well.  The Alpine Symphony is shorter, but concise, the ideas more concentrated.   Even Bychkov's Mahler Symphony no 6 (read more here) was infused by this insight into the concept of landscape providing structure for metaphysical ideas.   In the "Nacht" episode, horns call us forwards, and cymbals crash. The "mountains" loom ahead, emerging out of the rumbling darkness into sunlight.   As Boulez used to say "Listen for the trajectory". No waffling here.  Bychkov leads the ascent with urgent, though not rushed purpose.  The lyrical segments use metaphors like forests and brook, but their value isn't merely scenic. The waterfall sparkles with life : the stream originates in a source high above, possibly from beneath the primeval glaciers.  Thus the bright sparkle in the orchestra, as if the music itself were infused by light, the wind instruments, literally suggesting wind, speed and  movement.

The "Erschienung" is a warning.  Elemental mountain spirits haunt alpine lore. In musical terms this introduces mystery, a reminder that getting lost in mountains can get you killed. The "meadows" of calm serve as a looking-back, a pause that highlights the arduous ascent. For a moment, we're rewarded with expansive vistas, the strings shining, the brass suggesting vast scale.  What is this "Vision"? Is it a panorama, or a glimpse of higher spiritual and artistic ideals?  But just as we think we've reached the high point, darker, more elusive elements enter.  In the mountains, storms can appear in sunny skies, as in life.  Bychkov shaped the quieter passages : single, sharp  bowings and pluckings carefully observed.  The timpani crash, the orchestra breaks out in tumult, though a tumult meticulously defined so its colours remain ferociously vivid.  Lose your wits in a mountain storm and you're dead. After the outburst, the music stretches again: elegantly but with affirmation.  Strauss includes celeste and organ for sonority, but also to suggest what might lie behind the transcendance. As Bychkov said, we don't know what lies ahead, but we are not really back at the beginning. though the diminuendos might evoke clouds and nightfall.  In this performance I kept imagining that I heard echoes of other works. including  Mahler 8, but definitely not direct quotes.  As in so many things, the wider your experience, the more you get out of life,  and the more you learn from your "journey", a message which does reflect the firm resolve of Strauss's conception.  Definitely not a "chocolate box" performance!  Bychkov's intelligence and clarity of vision made this an immensely rewarding traverse. 

At first, the connection between Strauss's Alpine Symphony and Thomas Larcher's Symphony no 2 "Cenotaph" might have seemed a stretch. Larcher lives in the Austrian Alps, apparently almost off grid, and much of his output  is mystically contemplative, like his Violin Concerto (more here), his Piano Concerto and his Die Nacht de Verlorenen (more here)  Larcher's Symphony no 2 grew from his anguish over the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, and the images of drowned children and fleeing migrants.  But don't expect a "programme" or any obvious signposts. Instead, it's a piece which deals with emotional response to crisis: shock, anger, frustration expressed through abstract sound. Thus the large orchestra and multiple voices,  complex cross-rhythms and density, a powerful repetitive theme which pounds fiercely, dissipated only by rising, sharp figures that then explode in an outburst of fast-moving flurries.  A hollow non-melody where the bow of a single violin skitters over wood is absorbed by the orchestra but then emerges once again, after silence.   Vividly angular lines, wind machines, dizzying changes of tempo. The insistent pounding repetitions seems to rise like an insane dance, then disintegrate into shards, followed by an odd but very beautiful quasi-minuet that breaks off after a few bars, then revives in the third  movement, a scherzo where the repetitions become fuller, and more circular.  The lone violin returns for a brief moment, followed hy low drones and then silence.  (Photo of Thomas Larcher above copyright Richard Haughton.)

"I want to explore the forms of our musical past under the light of the (musical and human) developments we have been part of during our lifetime"  Larcher wrote for the premiere this June where Bychkov conducted it with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra  "How can we find tonality that speaks in our time? And how can the old forms speak to us? These are questions I often ask myself. This piece is very much about different forms of energy: bundled, scattered, smooth, kinetic or furious."   This Proms season, there have been premieres which have been just awful as music ( Lera Auerbach), barely redeemed by good performance, and work ruined by conductors who think one  size fits all, regardless of genre (no names, but thank goodness one of these is moving on).  Bychkov doesn't conduct much new music, but here he showed what a real conductor can do when he cares enough about music to do it properly.  Larcher's Symphony no 2 is a keeper. If the BBC would programme good new music with good performances, instead of commissioning titbits  and populist crossover, audiences would realize what's really happening in the world. 

Between two pieces of non-programmatic work based on theoretical programmes, Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder in Felix Mottl's orchestration, with soloist Elisabeth Kulman.  Pleasant enough but, for once, Wagner didn't eclipse all else.

Sensational chemistry ! Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla CBSO Abrahamsen Tchaikovsky

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra  in a truly sensational Prom 55 at the Royal Albert Hall, an occasion which those of us lucky enough to have been there will not forget. The CBSO is unique. Its members have an uncanny knack for picking relatively unknown conductors and growing with them.  They picked Simon Rattle as Music Director when he was 25, Sakari Oramo at 31, Andris Nelsons at age 30, and now Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, also 30.  This symbiotic relationship between orchestra and conductors makes the CBSO what it is: a very different dynamic from the usual way orchestras are run.  In each case the orchestra shaped the conductor as much as the conductor shaped the orchestra.  This close relationship - like family, some say - is fundamental to understanding the orchestra and, indeed, its conductors, who carry the CBSO imprint with them just as much as the orchestra developed duringn their stewardship. The CBSO is easily one of the Big Five in British music, and absolutely world class.  Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has a lot to live up to, but from this Prom, it's clear that she has what it takes.

Just as Rattle, Oramo and Nelsons are utterly individual and distinctive, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is very much her own person. She's so petite that the official BBC photographer had a hard time getting her in the frame, dwarfed as she was by all around her. But, as so often, looks mislead. Gražinytė-Tyla is an unusually athletic conductor, her face as animated as her body, yet every movement she makes is purposeful.  Her tiny hands flutter but communicate with such authority that the whole orchestra seems transfixed.  Excellence at the level the CBSO has reached doesn't come about by accident.  Good music deserves nothing less.

The Overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute sparkled: clean, shining brass, vivacious winds, strings whizzing along with manic brio. So expressive that the spirit of the opera - and its composer - seemed to materialize. Magical, yes, but also with diabolic fervour.  In the opera, Tamino is tested. Sarastro  is no cuddly father figure.  Thus the discipline in the CBSO's playing underlined the moral resolve that lies at the heart of the Singspiele, which is by no means a pretty bit of fluff.  Being a Freemason in Mozart's time was secretive and rather sinister. Gražinytė-Tyla's background lies in vocal music. Like Nelsons, she could achieve great things if she did opera.  To my delight, she announced plans on the radio rebroadcast for a concert performance of Mozart Idomeneo in a future CBSO season.

Hans Abrahamsen's Let Me Tell You was commissioned for Barbara Hannigan, who has performed the piece many times since its 2013 premiere with Andris Nelsons and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It's had so much exposure that it's become a celebrity star turn, which distracts from its considerable musical qualities.  Abrahamsen's greatest popular hit is ironically, a bit of an anomaly.  At roughly 35 minutes, it's longer  than all the vocal music put together that Abrahamsen has written in his long and productive career.  The words are those of  Shakespeare's Ophelia, who was torn between her love for Hamlet and her grief at the death of her father. As she sings, she falls into a brook and drowns.  Thus the long, limpid lines that suggest flowing liquids,  circular figures that suggest the vortex that will drag Ophelia to the depths   The ethereal qualities of Hannigan's voice give her singing an unworldly strangeness that is at once crystal clear and elusively opaque.   The voice is  disembodied, like the wind and brass instruments that form the core oif the piece. If Hannigan were an instrument she'd do circular breathing.  Sudden flights upward and turns of pitch. Syllables fragment and reform, like droplets of water reflected in light - wonderfully delicate textures created by harp, celeste, and percussion with tubular bells and tiny wooden objects scraped and beaten, making sounds like grasses blowing in the wind. Sounds of nature, too subtle and too elusive to identify.

Let Me Tell You is in many ways not a song sequence at all but another of Abrahamsen's intensely detailed soundscapes like Wald and Schnee.  "Music is pictures of music", Abrahamsen once said. "That is a strong underlying element in my world of ideas when I compose - as is the fictional aspect that one moves around in an imaginary space of music. What one hears is pictures - basically, music is already there."   In Let Me Tell You, Abrahamsen collaborated with Paul Griffiths, the author and music historian, whose books on modern music are still, after 30 years, still the best informed. In comparison, The Rest is Noise is Reader's Digest. For me, Abrahamsen's music is magical and full of wonder. The CBSO has a thing for Abrahamsen, too. Earlier this year, Ilan Volkov conducted Abrahamsen's  Left, alone. (read more here)

Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO concluded with Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4 in F minor. Everyone knows that, or thinks they do, which is why it's important to always keep listening.  The mark of a good conductor is whether he or she cares enough about the music to find something special about it. Routine performances can be the death of art. Tchaikovsky's Fourth is a highly dramatic work, almost schizoid in its juxtaposition of sweet lyricism and heartbreaking crescendi.  This was an exciting performance, but exciting because it blazed with the excitement that comes from excellence. I used to hang out with theoretical physicists who could wax ecstatic about elegant theorems.   There are many different ways of feeling emotion. I was thrilled by this performance, bursting as it was with vivacious joy and energy, all the more exciting because it was executed with such natural poise.

Bottom photo: Roger Thomas

Durch Mitleid wissend - Bayreuth Parsifal 2016

Wagner Parsifal at Bayreuth: always a place of pilgrimage. But would Wagner himself have prefered po-faced reverence or thought-provoking engagement?   Wagner didn't do "pretty pictures". Of all his oeuvre, Parsifal is the epitome of an ideas-opera, where abstract concepts are central to the action. It is a medieval mystery play, writ large.  But what abstract concepts?  Religiosity or true religion? Formula or genuine faith?  Parsifal has acquired a veneer of  religiosity because audiences assume that an opera with Good Friday music and semi-religious symbols must somehow be "Christian". Yet the theology of Parsifal is thoroughly unorthodox. The Grail concept pre-dates Christianity and lives on in legends with marginal connection to what we know of the Early Church. The Knights Templar did exist but were ruthlessly suppressed. And that's even before we get to Klingsor and Kundry.  Take Parsifal at face value, and miss its true challenge. 

Controversy! Parsifal with Muslims! Uwe Erik Laufenberg's new production for 2016 confronts received wisdom, so at first it shocks. But as with many new ideas, deeper consideration yields insight. The Knights Templar were a military order, created to drive Muslims out of the Holy Land.  So much for "Love thy neighbour as thyself".  Jesus wouldn't have been a part of this community. Connecting Parsifal to Islam is not nearly as scandalous as it might seem. In these times of hate, ignorance and intolerance, we need to rethink fundamentals and second-hand assumptions. Again and again, Wagner writes "Durch Mitglied wissend...."  ("Through Compassion, knowledge".) Images of water and purity, not bloodshed.  The Grail Community inhabit a desert, in every sense, bereft of replenishment.  Under this lovely marble dome, amidst rubble, they lie on stretchers, dying of thirst.  A light shines and a young boy appears, as does a realistic swan.  Kundry (Elena Pankratova) quietly cradles the living child, Gurnemanz (Georg Zeppenfeld) cradles the dead bird, raging at Parsifal (Klaus Florian Vogt).  A small detail, but one which speaks volumes.

Amfortas (Ryan McKinny), fortified, appears as Christ Crucified, with a crown of thorns, arms outstretched. Amfortas is the son of Titurel (Karl-Heinz Lehner) , a semi-supernatural figure, but mortal.  Titurel's disembodied voice booms from above the stage. But what do his words mean "Muss ich sterben, vom Retter ungeleitet?" If Parsifal the saviour, who is he who is his father?  Parsifal is fascinated by who his mother might have been, but isn't much bothered by his father.  Who is Klingsor, one wonders? Whether one believes that Jesus was God made man to save the world, that is the fundamental precept of Christianity.

It's not Muslims who could be discomforted by this approach to the opera, and understandably so, too. But Laufenberg's interpretation comes from the opera itself.  How does  Parsifal (first seen with a quiff) become entranced by the faith that the Grail Community believe in, even in their own flawed way?  I don't know how this is shown on stage, but in the film of the production, the long orchestral transit is illustrated by a depiction of the universe, with stars and planets: Extremely beautiful, very profound. Although the Parsifal bells are overwhelming, they fit wonderfully with this cosmic panorama.  The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra was conducted by Hartmut Haenchen. Amfortas enters a glowing, light-filled bath.  The Knights, dressed as monks,  partake of the chalice (a Grail), in which wine has been transubstatiated into the blood of Christ.  Yet there's something very spiritual about this scne, lit in silvers and pastels. The monks embrace in fellowship. Parsifal, sitting among them, absorbs the mystery. No wonder he spends the rest of his life trying to come back.


In Act Two, the "church" is transformed into an Islamic palace, the walls decorated with blue and white tiles, a pool in the background, a symbol of the Islamic concept of Paradise as a place with cooling water.  A figure dressed in white, his mouth gagged, sits while Klingsor (Gerd Grochowski) rages.  It's Amfortas, forced  into watching his past re-enacted. Klingsor, like so many demagogues, is obsessed by what he claims to hate. Against a background of crucifixes, he holds a crucifix and rants. Psychologically telling - Klingsor wanted to be like God, but is a loser.  His realm is delusion. The Flower Maidens are seductive, but they're not real.  Burkas (symbols of oppression) transform to semi nudity.  Just as the Grail Knights hate women, so does Klingsor, which makes Kundry's role in this opera so critical. Parsifal enters, as a commando: another provocative image these days when we see armed intruders of all types on the news.  As Kundry attempts to seduce Parsifal, Amfortas and Klingsor watch from the shadows. Realizing how Amfortas received his wound shakes Parsifal to his senses.

The overture to Act Three is illustrated by a film of a pool, with palm fronds in a misty haze, a subtle but deliberate reference to Palm Sunday and what happens thereafter.  Is Kundry in hijab, or is her headcloth the kind many women the world over wear? Is Gurnemanz in monastic robes, or does his waistcoat resemble that of a man in the Middle East?  A gunman in black breaks in, but Gurnemanz welcomes him as a guest, for it is a Holy Day. The gunman plants a cross into the ground. It's the long-sought spear that caused Amfortas's wound.  Wonderful acting from Georg Zeppenfeld, who portrays Gurnemanz as a mellowed old man who cries at the thought of Titurel's death.  I was rather less convinced when the set opened out to a vista of forests and waterfalls, with dancing nymphs - the Flower Maidens made pure? - but in a production with many other good ideas  a misfire like this is forgivable.  In any case, Wagner;'s stage directions refer to to a Quelle, grasses and Blume auf den Auen.  Mitglied !

This tender, almost domestic interlude serves to highlight the power of the Mittag music. Through rising clouds we spot the visage of Richard Wagner with a wry smile, and then see a marvellously clear shot of a church bell, while the Parsifal bells ring out.  Then we're back with the monks. Amfortas opens Titurel's coffin, but all that's left is dust. "Mein Vater". "Ein Mensch, wie alle" as Gurnemanz had earlier described him. Parsifal brings forth the spear, diguised as a cross.  Vogt's voice rings forcefully, but clear and luminous,  haloed by the orchestra.   Vogt is wonderful, the Parsifal of our times. "Oh! Welchen Wunders höchstes Glück!", his voice rings up as he holds the spear, which he then places in the coffin.  Amfortas removes his cricifix and throws it into the coffin. You can see why many would be discomforted by this, even they could cope otherwise. The monks and other men join in - possibly Muslims, wearing tunics and caps - placing precious objects beside the spear. Literally "burying the hatchet". This, not baptism. or any specific Christian rite, is the Höchsten Heiles Wunder! Erlösung dem Erlöser! 

This new Bayreuth Parsifal might take some time to get used to, but it's well worth the effort since it's true to the libretto and to the deeper meaning of the opera.  It's not Christian. Mitglied is universal.  It also marks a new departure for Bayreuth, burying at least some of the bigotry of the past. 

BBC Scottish SO Volkov : Grisey Mahler Mozart

Proms 46 and 48 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra making their welcome annual visit to the Royal Albert Hall, London. Since the BBC SSO is second only to the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the BBC stable of orchestras, these Proms were special occasions.  This year, they played  not with their usual Chief but with Ilan Volkov, Principal Guest Conductor, and Matthias Pintscher, Artist-in-Association.  Those familiar with these conductors would be on alert, since Volkov and Pintscher are both leading specialists in contemporary music. Hence the unusual programmes:  Grisey with Mahler and Mozart; Pintscher and Mendelssohn.

Volkov is passionate about Gérard Grisey, one of the most iconic figures in  modern music, who left work of strikingly original quality.  For more, read Liam Cagney's informative piece on Grisey here and lots more on this blog, if you click the label "Grisey" below.  Grisey himself described  Dérives (1974/5) as the movement of a boat, adapting to waves and currents, its trajectory identifiable by points of juncture between the small ensembles . "Ces différentes dérives reflètent une même intention : composer non plus l’objet, mais le passage d’un objet à un autre et son évolution. Ceci n’empêche nullement de contrôler la nature de l’objet sonore que l’on manipule, mais il ne prend son sens que dans le temps, inséré dans un contexte qui le définit. Le chemin parcouru est plus important que le véhicule." 

Dérives began with long, searching planes, tiny incidents in the background gradually coming into prominence. This sense of inner stillness operates on your mind much in the way that deep meditation releases you from the detritus of noise that passes for much of life. Gradually a rocking rhythm emerges, intercepted by a crashing sound, not sufficient to disrupt the calm equilibrium.  More  extended chords, so rarified they seem to flow into each other like liquids,  interjecting chords adding spiky definition.  The pace picks up suddenly, whips of angular sound,  then darker longer chords but the crystalline serenity continues, as if the orchestra were creating an invisible being levitating itself above the stage.  It is less complex than Les espaces acoustiques, written soon after, but the germ of the idea is already present. Wonderfully restrained, glistening playing The BBCSSO are second only to the BBC SO, but they're unique in smaller-scale, intense and esoteric works like this. I wish they'd do more.  Pity the Proms don't do justice to really fine music like this, but at least they bring Grisey to the attention of a mass audience.

While this performance of Mahler's Rückert-Lieder was more routine than rewarding, it concluded with Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, linking to Grisey's luminous Dérives.  Haunted still by thoughts of Grisey, I could not help feeling a frisson. Grisey's final masterpiece,  Quatre chants for fraîchir la seule  deals with a similar kind of ethereal transcendance.  The soloist was Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, whom I've heard only once before, she's quite young. 

Volkov and the BBC SSO concluded with Mozart's Mass in C minor, or rather a new completion thereof.  It's Mass-lite, breezy and youthful.  Baumgartner was joined by Louise Alder, Carolyn Sampson, Benjamin Hulett, Matthew Rose and the BBC Symphony Chorus.