Wolfgang Rihm, Violin Concerto No.6 World Premiere

Poème du Peintre

Wolfgang Rihm is on—minimally—fire. He knocks out new, major works at a rate that it makes you wonder if anybody else is still composing at all, in Germany. A Horn Concerto in Lucerne, a Triple Concerto, the "Second" Piano Concerto (terrific, yet be reported on!) in Salzburg, and now his Sixth Violin Concerto*, written for and dedicated to Renaud Capuçon, performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra [on Twitter] under Philippe Jordan and played in their new “Fridays@7” concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus.

W.Rihm (+A.Berg), Time Chant (+ VC), A.S.Mutter / J.Levine / CSO DG W.Rihm (+S.Currier), WORK_in_QUESTION (+Time Machines etc.), A.S.Mutter / NYPhil / M.Francis, A.Gilbert DG

That series is a stab at the short-form concert, aiming at about an hour’s length, without an intermission. So far that hour-thing has not quite worked out, as concert length is predictably, habitually underestimated… but whereas the first time around the concert was a whole work too long, this time it was just one movement too long. In any case, if that aimed-at-brevity weren’t laudable enough, the concert series also comes with booze and music at the optional long tail in the foyer downstairs, with a VSO band playing and/or soloists and the conductor performing in a reasonably relaxed atmosphere. On this occasion, the format meant that Schubert’s Fifth—part of the laudable Schubert Cycle of the VSO—was axed from the program also containing Dvořák’s Eight.

Having had a chance to watch the violin concerto come together throughout three rehearsals, it was enormous how much the work had developed by the time it hit the stage at prime time. Wolfgang Rihm took himself back for the first rehearsal, even though what he heard must have been a good deal from what he might have imagined. Only when orchestra and conductor had made the natural progress that occurs in rehearsal, did he more frequently interject, questioning stray notes that were either wrong in the printed score or the parts, and suggesting occasional interpretative adjustments. Repeated timpani notes toward the end of the concerto weren’t quite right to him. Helpfully, Jordan interpreted his request: “Oh, advancing like a steam engine?” Rihm, whose gigantic cranium makes him look like his own bobble-head figure, shook said head: “No—breathing, hovering, advancing. Like a thing, a being, like a creature.” Jordan: “Ok. One more time; this time more like a Thing!”

Just as Rihm has written the Piano Concerto specifically for and around Tzimon Barto, or violin concertos for the specific talents of Anne-Sophie Mutter and Carolin Widmann, Poème du Peintre is tailored to Renaud Capuçon. After the first rehearsal, the soloist suggested that it was really his language. It’s hard to say for me what that exactly is, not knowing Capuçon’s playing and style intimately enough. Perhaps it is the nervous, or rather: alert energy that is woven through the concert like a silver thread. The concerto’s name, “Painter’s Poem”, stems from the idea of composing a work that is to Max Beckmann’s portrait of Max Reger a concerto to portray Ysaÿe. Rihm and Capuçon both adore Ysaÿe (well beyond the—rightly—hailed solo violin sonatas), which might serve as the basis for the French violinist so taking to the work. The clichéd description of his performance, without any fear of saying something controvertible would be, and is: “totally committed”.

Other Reviews: Chanda VanderHart, Pleasing Rihm and Dvorak from Capuçon and the Symphoniker, but 'concept' falters (bachtrack, January 11, 2015)

The concerto begins tentatively. On the surface it is considerably less French than the Piano Concerto from Salzburg (with its overt Chopin references and subtle air of Debussy creeping in). It is less overtly romantic and also a good deal less intuitively comprehensible. That’s not to say that it doesn’t come around and enchant the willing listener. The orchestra, for much of the almost continuous violin part, engages in color and contrast work, breathing and heaving and rhythmically advancing things to a searing solo-part. The general tone is, a few eruptions apart, and in spite of the tenacious soloist, soft-hued; the dissonances plush and more feathered than in-your-face. Then, a bit more than half-way through the 17-some minute work, there are crackling, gnarling, brassy chord that would open the gates to Mordor in a movie. There comes a short moment where it feels like a famous quotation (that on-the-tip-of-the-tongue-feeling); melting away, off to the side, Schnittke-style. Perhaps it’s one of the many presumed Ysaÿe-references and the only one that pierced the level of my awareness—just not wholly. The claves’ click-click solo of the percussionist was meant as an impulse for the soloist to take and play off it, but it did not quite yet come across as presumably intended. At least not in this first performance. But with any optimism, the work will get a decent amount of repeat performances (if less likely so as the repertoire-suitable piano concerto) and claves and violin will forevermore work in perfect

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NSO Takes Up Rihm

W. Rihm, Dithyrambe (inter alia), Arditti Quartet, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (Kairos, 2009)

All of the coverage of Wolfgang Rihm's music in live performances here at Ionarts has come from our European correspondent. The German composer, born in Karlsruhe in 1952, is celebrated in Europe and much less known here in the U.S. In conservative Washington, the adjective of choice would likely tip over to unknown. So Christoph Eschenbach's co-commissioning of a new piano concerto from Rihm is significant, and this week's American premiere of the work, with the National Symphony Orchestra last night, reunited him with pianist Tzimon Barto, with whom he performed the world premiere at the Salzburg Festival last August.

The piece is a strange concerto by almost any measure of the genre, in two long movements with little overtly showy technical display from the keyboard -- what Rihm has called "virtuoso fodder," as quoted in Thomas May's informative program notes -- indeed few moments, until the end of the work, where the piano is not presented really as part of the orchestra. Although there is a lot of dialogue back and forth between orchestra and soloist in the score, there was never a sense that the piano was leading the piece. That being said, it was a relief to hear not just another concerto but something that had an unmistakable and often alluring individuality right from its soft, smoky opening.

The first movement often felt like a cross between cocktail piano and an austere, Webernesque pointillism, murky clouds of mostly strings for much of the movement that hovered around the piano's murmuring commentary, a tribute to Barto's "exquisite pianissimo," as Rihm put it. The writing is quite lush, with misty harp and little percussion or brass until a climax near the end. The second movement begins with the piano largely up in the treble half of its range, matched by more of the battery that Rihm pulls out of his back pocket. The movement is labeled a rondo, and without having studied the score in detail, a sense of a section of music returning was evident, although in a varied form each time, with a sort of cadenza before the final one, a nod to traditional form. In the end, though, it is the first movement's delicacy that wins out.

Other Articles: Robert Battey, Rihm’s Thorny Concerto Leaves Listener In Lurch (Classical Voice North America, January 20) Anne Midgette, Barto, Eschenbach make case for Rihm’s appealing concerto (Washington Post, January 16) ---, A modernist master’s Mozartean face: Rihm’s new piano concerto at the NSO (Washington Post, January 10) Tom Service, Wolfgang Rihm wins the Grawemeyer (The Guardian, December 2)

The rest of the program was of much less interest, both pieces -- Dvořák's Carnival Overture and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique -- having been performed by the NSO within the last five years. Eschenbach appeared to use the Dvořák as a test piece for his string section, with one of the candidates for the vacant associate concertmaster chair sitting as concertmaster -- Justine Lamb-Budge, concertmaster of the Canton Symphony Orchestra -- and the slapdash tempo of the opening sounded, well, a little slapdash. The candidate had a crack at several solos throughout the evening, all played beautifully, if without much bravura or flash.

Eschenbach's choice of nervous, racing tempi affected the Berlioz as well, giving an appropriately distracted quality to the first movement but also undercutting some of the effects, particularly in the fourth and fifth movements (like the col legno strikes in the Witches' Sabbath). In spite of a lovely duet between English horn and oboe in the Scène aux champs, the slow movement, given an overly indulgent rubato, was a little soporific. One particularly unpleasing detail was the sound of the tubular bells in the finale, which buzzed as if they were making something else resonate, but at a dissonant frequency. Hopefully, the NSO staff can figure out what was going on there and correct it for the subsequent performances.

This program repeats on Saturday evening only.

Notes from the 2014 Salzburg Festival ( 7 ) Liederabend • GerhaherHuber

Liederabend • Salzburg contemporary • Rihm • GerhaherHuber

To every Limit

Pictures (details) courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Silvia Lelli. Click to see full pictures.

When going to a GerhaherHuber recital, there is no need to look at the program beforehand: Anyone who knows and appreciates the “symbiotic duo” (Eleonore Büning) will go whatever they play, knowing that it will be predictably serious, intelligent fare, well put together, and of course performed to a standard that no one else exceeds. The closest Gerhaher has ever come to presenting a potpourri was his Mahler album with which, I assume, he also toured… so there you go. Gerhaher, is as per Büning’s eulogy* after the concert, when she aptly pointed it out, the best Lied-singer of our time: “everything he sings becomes alive and true. It is this that may be the highest merit that can be bestowed on any artist: the gift of absolute authenticity.”

This is true and known and, as mentioned, predictable, and consequently it becomes very boring to write about them… there is only a limited amount of superlatives and hyperbolic adjectives... so many GerhaherHuber recitals one hopes to live to hear, and the danger of (self)plagiarizing ever around the corner. One the other hand, one wouldn’t simply want to sit back and hope for the first deviation from excruciating excellence, and then go Ha-haa, like Nelson from the Simpsons.

F.Schubert, "Nachtviolen" C.Gerhaher & G.Huber Sony

In this program in the steamy Haus für Mozart on Tuesday, August 5^th, Gerhaher brought his  plaintive sounds of heartrending grays (verging, often enough, on the pitch black) to Goethe Songs by Schubert and Wolfgang Rihm. He likes to go for pain, not beauty, of course, as he did in “Who never at his bread with tears” from the Three songs of Gesänge des Harfners ‘aus Wilhelm Meister’. He turned from a patient suffering in “Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt” to a more aggressive, less patient tone, and Huber’s pianism felt as though through his sensitive pleading he meant to just keep a good friend on the right side of the emotional precipice. Rihm’s Goethelieder frames Goethe’s words in Rihm’s rhythm, in a musical language the difficulty of which seemed a logical extension from the bleak fare GerhaherHuber had already given us in the Schubert. Insistent, repetitive, minimalist, he gives the text in “Höchste Gunst” a whole new emphasis. “Aus Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren” in its halting and lost phrases was ever shadowy and abstract which contrasted almost surprisingly with the melodious soft swing of “Sehnsucht”, D.123. Into that, Huber sneaked a level of near-innocence onto the wings of the described raven, as he did bubbling murmur into the stanza that mentions a river (“Sie wandelt am Bach / Die Wiesen entlang”). And the last strophe of the “Shepard’s Lament” D.121 sounded truly like a lullaby.

The long, perhaps too long, program picked up, after intermission, with “Prometheus” D. 674 (what a wonderful troubled character for Gerhaher to sink his musical fangs into), and through it and “Mahomet’s Song” D.594 he went towards a light… a dawn… not outright sunshine. Not here, not in “Ganymede” (D.544), not in “An Schwager Kronos” D.369. The central work of the second half, and the reason why the concert was not just billed as one of the Liederabends but also as part of “Salzburg contemporary”, was Wolfgang Rihm again, with his “Winter Journey through the Harz Mountains” which got its Austrian premiere. Rihm composed a bitter-sweet music, like the text, and tailored it to the artists, exploring both the rough and even brutal tones, as well as a detached, child-like beauty. “Willkommen und Abschied” D.767, an encore (“Wanderer’s Nachtlied” II, after having already sung the first, D.224, earlier), a prize, and off he was into the night. Not really, actually, because he went on to sign CDs, but the cliché demands that he went off to some lair of intellectual despair, instead of a beer in gay company, which is much more likely what he and Huber did, good Bavarians that they are at heart.

The recital will be broadcast on Ö1 on August 20^th, at 7.30PM CET.

* The Lifetime-so-far-Achievement-Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik that Eleonore Büning, as chairwoman of the German Record Critics' Award, handed over after the Liederabend at the Haus für Mozart went just to Gerhaher, who also does opera and oratorios, of course. He isn’t, admittedly, attached by the hip to his musical co-conspirator and pianist Gerold Huber, but every success in the Lied that is Gerhaher’s is also the success of Huber’s.

Wolfgang Rihm's Choral Music

W. Rihm, Astralis, Other Choral Works, RIAS Kammerchor, H.-C. Rademann (released on March 13, 2012) HMC 902129 | 68'07" Listen to excerpts on Google Play

This review was originally published by The Classical Review (May 9, 2012)

Wolfgang Rihm, who runs the Institute of Modern Music at the Conservatory of Music in Karlsruhe, the city where he was born in 1952, is a prolific composer whose music, in many genres, is finding its way to performance more and more. His compositions for string quartet were the focus of the 5e Biennale de quatuors à cordes in Paris this winter, and he has had stints as composer-in-residence at the Lucerne Festival and at the Salzburg Festival, where his opera Dionysos had a well-regarded premiere in 2010. Rihm celebrates his 60th birthday this year, and Hans-Christoph Rademann and the talented singers of the RIAS Kammerchor have released this disc in his honor, with a selection of his choral music, ranging from the 1960s to the last decade.

Rihm, who was raised as a Catholic, came by his love of choral music honestly, having sung for some years in the Karlsruhe Oratorio Choir, a point made in the fine booklet essay by scholar Toni Hildebrandt. Although his approach to choral music is on one hand backward-looking -- traditional Latin texts, references to Renaissance composers, willingness to use tonal triads -- Rihm's harmonic style incorporates too much dissonant vocabulary to be grouped with the saccharine music of the holy minimalists like Arvo Pärt or John Tavener, although there are pieces in this selection that might fit that description, like the motets Tristis est anima mea and Ecce vidimus eum. The RIAS Kammerchor gives virtuosic performances of all this often complicated music, led by conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann, with the sheer volume produced sometimes near overwhelming, as in the almost shrieked conclusion of Recessit pater noster, a heroic and sharply dissonant evocation of the Harrowing of Hell that is one of the Sieben Passions-Texte for six voices, the most recent works recorded here. The group's intonation is finely honed, making many of the more Messiaen-like colorful-dissonant chords, in Velum templi scissum est, for example, shimmer with chromatic complexity. (Rihm also studied music theory, let us not forget.)

In Astralis, the third work in a series Rihm calls "Über die Linie" (Over the line), a small choir is instructed to sing as slowly and as quietly as possible. The poetic lines drawn from Heinrich von Ofterdingen, a novel fragment by Novalis, the pseudonym of 18th-century writer Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, puts one in mind of the subject matter of Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. The end of days -- "Space and time no longer order the world: Here the future is in the past" -- as it might be described in Christian terms is for Novalis the dawn of "the reign of love," a Romantic vision of the end of time. It opens with some high, fragile notes in the cello (the instrument essentially functions like an extra voice, diving in and out of the choral texture at phrase ends), and there are some almost imperceptible sounds added by timpani: both instrumental parts are performed by members of musikFabrik, the contemporary music ensemble based in Cologne. The sense of temporal stasis created by this music, with its hanging phrases and clouds of choral sound (with one ear-shattering crescendo in the 21st of its 29 minutes -- caveat auditor, especially one listening on headphones), is meant to vault the listener into a sort of cosmic transcendence, and indeed it can make for interesting dreams if you listen to it with your eyes closed.

The only complaint one might raise about this selection of Rihm's music is a certain sameness of style, with a lot of mostly slow-paced homophony adding up to an overall dull experience. The conclusion of the disc with the much rougher Fragmenta Passionis (from 1968, when Rihm was just 16) is an admirable gesture to break the possible monotony. Rihm, in those days of heady experimentation, plays with more contrapuntal structure and decidedly non-traditional devices, like the quasi-shouted chords of the first fragment and the Sprechstimme-style yells, groans, cackles, and waves of moaned glissandi in the second fragment, based on the text "They all shouted, 'Crucify him'!," but he comes back, on the final words ("Gottes Sohn!") of the fifth fragment, to a full-blown A major triad. If you have enjoyed Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung or Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, also composed in that groovy Age of Aquarius, you will like this work's five compact movements.

SEE ALSO:
Tom Service, Wolfgang Rihm: the musical omnivore (The Guardian, March 4, 2010)

Wolfgang Rihm on Ionarts

Charles T. Downey, Stimmung (October 3, 2007)

Andrew Clements, Rihm: Uber die Linie II (The Guardian, April 19, 2012)

Andrew Clark, Jakob Lenz, Hampstead Theatre, London (Financial Times, April 18, 2012)

Marcia Adair, Wolfgang Rihm and Deus passus (The Omniscient Mussel, [n.d.])

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 11 )

Kontinent Rihm 10 - Eschenbach / Barto / WPh

It takes a confluence of circumstances (including loss of the actual ticket) and a touch of talent for disorganization to casually check the Salzburg Festival website around two in the afternoon to see if my Vienna Philharmonic concert with Christoph Eschenbach and Tzimon Barto starts at seven or eight, only to find out it had started at eleven in the morning. More embarrassing still, since I was supposed meet the artists afterwards where, eventually (instantly, hopefully), they shrugged and went to lunch without me. But then, who would have ever assumed that both performances of the Vienna Philharmonic, including the Saturday one, were at eleven in the morning?

Fortunately the understanding and kind festival press staff were kind enough to get me into the Sunday performance without as much as raising a bemused or reproachful eyebrow, and lunch—wedged between Wolfgang Rihm and Tzimon Barto’s Austro-American manager—was still had, even if Christoph Eschenbach had to rush away after the appetizer to practice some more with Matthias Goerne before leaving Salzburg to play a private gig with Barto near the Attersee that night.

In between, Eschenbach/Barto played the same Schumann program that can also be enjoyed on their most recent CD (slated to be the ‘Best of 2010’, reviewed here, and now even ‘Wolfgang Rihm-approved’, who told me that he, too, cried when listening to it for the first time). The two concert pieces for piano and orchestra, joined by the Ghost Variations to form a piano concerto of its own, are rounded out on CD by Schumann’s Bach-influenced Six Etudes in Canonic Form for pedal piano in Debussy’s transcription for two pianos (I heard Barto-Eschenbach play that later that day, in above mentioned countryside barn-cum-concert hall). In concert Schumann Second Symphony is added, which is a program I also heard in Hamburg with the NDRSO this summer, where I was to interview Maestro Eschenbach (interview forthcoming in September). And in Salzburg, with the Vienna Philharmonic playing, the concert was tacked on to the Kontinente Rihm series by adding Rihm’s “Ernster Gesang” before the symphony, after intermission.

The short work (short is always good, and especially with Rihm, who occasionally falls victim to the pitfalls of lengthiness) was commissioned by Wolfgang Sawallisch for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s celebration of Brahms’ 100^th (death) anniversary in 1996. Without any blatantly obvious quotes, Rihm references Brahms’ Second and especially Third symphonies, several Intermezzi, and of course the Vier Ernste Gesänge (“Four Serious Songs”) from which Rihm takes the work’s name. It is very effective at establishing a sense of Brahms within a modern guise, modern in execution but easily accessible to the ears even of those in the audience who came despite, not because of Rihm. In a away, that doesn’t surprise, because Ernster Gesang in not just a beautiful work itself, but a lot of composers are most successful (in the above sense of ‘successful’) when they relate in some way—literally or ephemerally—to those who have come before, the composers we already know, cherish, love… Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart et al.

The obvious explanation for this is that in giving the audience their music, aligned to something that they relate to, they offer not just familiarity, but something to grasp; an easier “in” to the music. Like a work of modern architecture placed into an extant city block resonates with the casual viewer if it respects the sight-lines, proportions, ratios of its surroundings, the ensemble it is placed into, even if it is in every other way a product of its time, so a work of music that allows for context has an easier time hitting a vibe with listeners.

R.Schumann, Introd.& Allegro, Ghost Variations et al., Barto / Eschenbach / NDRSO Ondine

Lovely as it was to hear Ernster Gesang—to which Eschenbach has a natural relation as Sawallisch’s successor in Philadelphia—it did feel rather tacked on to an extant program… which happened to be superb. Those who had been at both performances—Rihm, among them—lauded this, the Sunday one, for adding yet something further to all four Schumann works. From a boldly varnished, very flexible Second Symphony in trademark VPO-sound (in the good sense, that) to the tender, torn Ghost Variations. Barto, who enjoys tempo extremes (if never without musical reasoning), takes the Variations very slowly; to the verge of one’s concentration no longer grasping the big line. Later, at lunch, he jokes with fellow pianist (and conductor) Stefan Vladar about the criticism of having ‘distorted the music’s architecture’ or ‘having lost the long line’: “I don’t lose the long line, I know exactly where I am and where I am going, at all points.” “Yes”, adds Vladar laughing, “if there is any losing of lines going on, it’s the audience’s fault.” With there being a bit of a joke in every joke [sic], they have a point, of course… even if it begs the question of how easy they’re going to make it for the audience not to ‘fail’. In any case, the Salzburg performance, although still not as overwhelming as the CD-listening experience, managed to join the Introduction and Allegro appassionato op.92 and the Concert-Allegro and Introduction op.134 better than I remember the Hamburg performance to have done, and the two girls sitting next to me, who I had regaled with the virtues of said recording, were disinclined to believe that the experience they just had could be bettered, on CD or in concert.

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 6 )

Chamber Concert 2 · Martha Argerich II

Kontinent Rihm 2

Jammed between evenings of Wolfgang Rihm, Monday offered a little divertissement with Martha Argerich and friends (and acquaintances) at the Mozarteum. The second of two concerts in that series, there was a little Saint-Saëns and Rachmaninoff for two pianos (a type of repertoire that Argerich does much to keep from being completely ignored), a little Janáček, Chopin, and Brahms. The Chopin Cello Sonata with Argerich and Maisky (the latter shackled to a space suit, by the looks of the très fashionable shirt he sported) was pleasing for the uninhibited pianism. And the best thing about Maisky was probably Argerich playing with the fully opened lid (something that Rostropovich wouldn’t tolerate with Sviatoslav Richter, for example, who had to use a quarter stick). Between odd spots of intonation, Maisky worked up occasional energy and intensity, but except for the finale, he generated more heat than light.

Rihm, Quid est Deus, et al., Cambreling / SWRO BBF Hänssler Classics

Gesualdo, Tenebrae Responsies, Hilliard Ensemble ECM

The following Brahms Quartet in g-minor (No.1, op.25) with violinist Dora Schwarzberg, her daughter Nora Romanoff (viola), Walter Delahunt (piano), and Mark Drobinsky (cello) was a touch clumsy but made up for it with Drobinsky’s terrific cello playing. Unobtrusive, graceful, calm, rhythmically and technically precise it was a study in the pitfalls of self-indulgence by way of contrast to what came before. Géza Hosszu-Legecky and the 5 DeVils topped things off in this five hour (!) concert, playing “Gypsy medleys” in shiny suits, slicked-back hair, oozing more narcissism during their Paprika flavored re-hashing of movie tunes than any echt-Hungarian spirit. Excepting cimbalist Gyula Csik, it should be noted that there is a considerable difference between getting lost in the music and getting lost in admiring yourself playing it. The result was how I imagine a musical night out with you local chapter of the New Jersey mafia.

On to Kontinent Rihm 2, though, with the South West (German) Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden & Freiburg under Sylvain Cambreling (SWR BBF, not to be mistaken with Norrington’s South West German Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, SWRSO) along with the chorus, the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart. The performance in the Kollegienkirche (which will be broadcast by Ö1 tonight, 11pm CET / 5pm EST) included Klaus Huber’s “Tenebrae” for large orchestra from 1966 and Rihm’s “QUID EST DEUS – Cantata Hermetica” for chorus and orchestra from 2007; both responses, in some way, to the music of Carlo Gesulado.

Tenebrae starts with flageolet whispers, a snake hissing in the percussion section, brief alternating spurts of brass and woodwinds, full stops, and develops through beautiful moments of quietness, deliberate lacunae of sound. What he achieves in some 18 minutes, Rihm expands to 40, running through 24 ‘definitions’ of God. The definitions themselves, taken from an apocryphal Latin text, are largely platitudes, many of them rehashing the much more succinct Aristotelian concept of the unmoved mover. When stripped of their noble veil of Latin, they sound like juvenile doodles of an aspiring intellectual who got bored in math class. The music, though, is pleasing and caresses the ear, the atmosphere lulling… before tiring with sameness. The dramatic incline is shallow and predictable, the accumulative power nil. With so much filler, one wonders if 13 definitions might not have been enough. God is anything, apparently, but not succinct. God and Wolfgang Rihm may be used interchangeably, in that context. A good deal of QUID EST DEUS reminded of Wilfred Hiller’s 2009/2010 “The Son of the Carpenter”, but I found the latter fare more novel, varied, and genuinely touching.

Preceding the two modern works were the Tenebrae Responsories by Gesulado, our everyone’s favorite murderous polyphonist, himself. Incidentally, the Hilliard Ensemble members must have found his polyphony murderous… their performance was an unhealthy mix of frayed, cracking, wobbly, and worn voices with nary a bright spot among them; a mere shadow of the crack (no pun intended) A capella ensemble I know from dozens of beloved ECM and Virgin recordings. Members of the orchestra, many eager to hear the famed ensemble for the first time, looked on with saddened astonishment.

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 4 )

Wolfgang Rihm • Dionysus

Coming to critical conclusions, in all their hazy mix of inevitable subjectivity and aspired-to objectivity, hasn’t anything to do with illusions of infallibility… it has more to do with certainty about aim, effect, efficiency. But especially aim. I know that when I listen to Verdi, for example. It’s not hard to discern that even his ‘dramatic’ works have merit; all around me they are embraced. Even as the music and orchestration in at least some of them—Nabucco comes to mind—is second rate. What I lack (until now; but working on it) is an understanding of the aim that these operas have. What are the conventions to which Verdi obviously caters, and what their merits? I may still not like it, even still dismiss them, once I know. But at least I could appreciate them for how well (or not) they are what they are and do what they do.

This all by way of saying: I had no inhibitions pronouncing the fourth part of Wolfgang Rihm’s Tutuguri—Poème dansé (Bild Kreuze … das Hufeisen … [die sechs Männer … der Siebte …]”) shtick with sticks. Even if there is much labor and thought behind a work, if the result is transparently banal, no alleged or actual depth can lift it from banality to a suddenly understood masterpiece. I have inhibitions, however, interpreting my personal dislike of Rihm’s opera Dionysus as the direct result of the work, rather than my incomprehension.

Superficially, Dionysus makes obvious references by the bucket load. Protagonist “N” is Nietzsche. The water nymphs torturing him in the opening are more than just Rheingold-inspired. The other main character “The Guest”, with guest being “Gast” in German, is a none-too-subtle hint at Nietzsche’s disciple-composer-friend-editor Heinrich Köselitz (a.k.a. Peter Gast). Ariadne is Cosima Wagner. Enacted biographical details that Mann similarly used for his Dr. Faustus, like the visit in a bordello. The (not quite yet dead) horse that is being beaten in the last act is the one in front of which Nietzsche (allegedly) threw himself in Turin to save it from the whip of its owner. From the letters he wrote in his last lucid moments after that collapse and other late works, Rihm assembled a text that follows no particular order or obvious logic. The whole Apollonian-Dionysus principles are played out (including the rather literal skinning of Nietzsche), but not in a way that had me find anything to hold on to. A colleague far better equipped to eke out sense of such works also suggested Moses & Aron (‘the inability to speak the word’) as alluded to by Rihm… and found much in the first two acts (though even he shrugged after the third and fourth).

Yet another, German, colleague who had seen the premiere a couple days earlier, reported back his being shocked, outright shocked, at the conservative music. I latched happily on his vivid description of a sound of a hypothetical 150 year old Richard Strauss composing today. I heard a few moments that were immediately and wholly pleasing and even searing, to be sure. But my idea of a 150 year old Richard Strauss must otherwise differ considerably from that of that arts critic. Punishing writing for voices, accentuations of phrases (perhaps the singers’ fault) that made neither sense textually or psychologically, and ungainly singing from the protagonists, bass-baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle (“N”) and tenor Matthias Klink [sic] (“A Guest”) put up a musical front that I found disinviting. Whether Kränzle in particular was asked to sing with a billy-goat vibrato or whether it was the result of a fiendishly difficult and taxing part, the result was still ugly. On the upside, it made the vocal beauty of Mojca Erdmann (“Ariadne”) stand out more.

Jonathan Meese designed the stage under Pierre Audi’s direction. A direction that happily ignored all of Rihm’s very detailed, almost old-fashioned descriptions in the score as to how the stage should be set and look—and that for the premiere performance. Remembering the strong, precise, and focused visual language, visually appealing staging by Friedkin for Das Gehege I thought that maybe, at least for the premiere, until audiences have achieved some kind of familiarity and understanding with the complex musical and literal underpinnings of the opera, such an opera deserves a literal, supportive direction. Heck, it’s the only time in my opera-going life where I wished for a Zeffirelli production. Bring out the elephants, or at least the real horse. Give me an actual rowboat, give me real reed banks and literal mountaintops.

Give me something, anything to grasp when elsewhere I am still grasping at straws. Not the deliberately crude, platitude- and irony-laced visual language of Meese. TOTAL JAPAN. NIETZSCHE SAKE. DRINK DIONYSUS-SAKE. [Nietzsche’s Alps are transplanted to Mt. Fuji, you see.] ACHTYNG MEESEWOLFBABY. BABYANIMALISM. TOTAL REVOLUTION. These, or similar, phrases in thick black brush strokes don’t so much help as remind me of my trying-too-hard-to-be-clever bored doodles during math and physics class. My favorite: “TOTAL HORSEBEE”. That’s incidentally my instinctive feeling about the opera, but it can’t be my conclusion (yet) for lack of the tools to judge it well by. I left the Haus für Mozart with a feeling of having failed.

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 3 )

Kontinent Rihm 1

Markus Hinterhäuser, in charge of the concert programs at the Salzburg Festival, is really leaving a mark with Kontinente series, each year devoting a good number of concerts to one contemporary composer. Ten, this year, and that’s not counting the opera Dionysus (more about that tomorrow) by Wolfgang Rihm, who is the 2010 featured composer.

What makes the Kontinent Rihm series so interesting is that they don’t just program Rihm (with all due respect: thank goodness), but mix it with interesting (sometimes conciliatory, conservative, sometimes delightfully rare) other works. When was the last time you’ve heard Darius Milhaud’s Les Choéphores—music for seven stage-scenes of Aeschylus’ Choephori (Oresteia)? I, never. Milhaud is composer who leaves me hot and cold—or after too much Le bœuf and La Création, lukewarm. But Les Choéphores is hot and cold and everything, just not lukewarm.

D.Milhaud , Les Choéphores, I.Markevitch / Orchestre Lamoureux DG W.Rihm, Tutuguri, F.Bollon / SWR RSO Stuttgart hänssler Classic

The intoxicating choral tableau begins innocently enough with a mix of French operatic tradition (anywhere from Gounod to Dukas) and Milhaud’s (then) distinctly modern early 20th century idiom and his inventive hand at scoring. And just when you expect another dose of twisted perfume hurled your way, he takes the orchestra out entirely, entrusts parts IV and V solely to percussion, and lets the chorus growl, speak, huff, hiss, puff, whistle, vocalize like 67 well tuned Caspars, while a speaker (mezzo Dörte Lyssewski, in this case) rhythmically chants the text. And that in 1915, a good seven years before Walton’s Façade. Let’s, by almost avoiding the mildly daft suggestion of this pre-shadowing rap music, get right to the performance at this point, because the Percussive Planet Ensemble, the Salzburg Bach Chorus, and especially Lyssewski made those two central passages a riveting affair, driven, absolutely irresistible. The tame, matter-of-factly reading of these parts on the Markevitch recording can’t, sadly, begin to get across the compelling force the live performance whipped up. Ingo Metzmacher and the DSO Berlin, a wonderful incisive soprano in Lucy Crowe and the French-throaty baritone Jean-Luc Ballestra (a potential double for Johnny Depp) all did their part to ensure success.

Then, after the first intermission, came Rihm—incredulously only 58 years old and already a Grande Dame (definitely not yet éminence grise) of German notational music: Tutuguri—Poème dansé, from 1980/82, inspired by the writing of Antonine Artaud… a ballet (dancing optional) in four (unrelated) scenes for large orchestra, six drummers, taped chorus and speaker (or, alternatively a loud parrot, I think). A single flute plays one note, then another, establishes a rhythmical pattern which is then, hesitantly, picked up by other winds, then brass instruments, until finally the piano and percussion relieve the monotony by introducing stop-and-go cacophony. Now having established that style, it continues more or less like that, for two more parts, taking a good 80 minutes until the end of the third scene where an actor/speaker (Martin Wuttke, here) gets to act out that above-mentioned parrot. Overacting can be a pain, though; I reckon the spontaneous laughter at his fervent, achingly sincere antics was not anticipated by Rihm. It was all a bit much of the same or, to put it nicely, not a terribly efficient way of getting the musical content across. I’d like to think that much of the same-ish Rihm experiences can effectively be gotten condensed, dramatized, in short: much improved, by seeing Das Gehege (review).

The orchestra, no longer needed for the fourth and final part, parted, along with half the audience, and after the second intermission the Martin Grubinger (review) percussion group took the stage. What followed was tedium with sticks; Koto drumming for white conservatory boys. Mindless, endless, continuously more simplistic drumming that doesn’t gain at all from accumulation (more likely: doesn’t even try to get any accumulative force going), and peters out in unsatisfactory horizontal boredom, stretched over interminable forty minutes. Occasionally matters are livened up by more dying parrots screaking from tape. Where’s Animal from the Muppets when you need him? If the drums had been covered with steed hide, at least I could have punned about beating a dead horse. But the six drummers just relentlessly beat congas with sticks and the work descended to the level of a drumming group therapy. It should be easy for the following nine Kontinent Rihm concerts to surpass this experience. Considerably.