Critic’s Notebook: Daniel Harding brings a touch of Sweden to the Konzerthaus

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Hugo Alfvén muss man entdeckt haben: Hinreißende Schweden-Romantik im Konzerthaus

Hugo Alfvén, Complete Symphonies, Suites & Rhapsodies var. Orch., Niklas Willén Naxos

G. Mahler, Orchestral Songs C.Gerhaher, K.Nagano, OSMontreal Sony

Swedish bonbon and Gerhaherisms

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s gig at the Vienna Konzerthaus was notable for its inclusion of Hugo Alfvén on the program, and Christian Gerhaher (who loves working with Harding) singing Mahler’s Rückert songs. Less attractive on paper perhaps was Also sprach Zarathustra lurking on the back of the program, which, of course, features one of the most memorable openings in all of classical music… followed by thirty minutes of tedium. But “Strauss” sells tickets, is fun, and already in the repertoire of the orchestra, whereas something really cool, romantic, and Swedish – say, the Viola Concerto of Allan Petterson or a Symphony by him or by Erland von Koch, Wilhelm Stenhammar, or Kurt Atterberg – would admittedly have been box office poison. Sånt är livet.

Incidentally, it was a pretty good Zarathustra, that Harding and his Swedes (he’s been their MD since 2007) delivered. Listening closely, you could hear how Strauss, in 1896, opens almost all the doors to his future works: In the octet of first desks (very nicely played!) we have premonitions of the Capriccio Sextet. Further down the road, there are glimmers of the Alpine Symphony, in those somewhat meandering, intertwining musical strands. And for the “Tanzlied”, a waltz on near-infinite loop, Harding mercifully took the reins tight, as a result of which the precision suffered, but at considerable benefit to the work.

The opening Alfvén (who should, but unfathomably does not, have a chapter in Surprised by Beauty) was En skärgårdssägen, op.20. Naturally the first-ever performance in the Konzerthaus, much like a visiting Viennese orchestra would probably be the first, if they played a Robert Fuchs Serenade on a visit to Stockholm. As the ear clamors for familiar references in this 1904 sea-themed tone poem about the group of islets outside of Stockholm, it finds them in Debussy during the impressionistic heaves, in Zemlinsky when the flame begins to lick in the strings, or even in Wagner, when the brass and timpani get going.

In between Hugo and Richard, it was Gerhaher to impress with his usual, unparalleled ‘intoned parlando’ in the Mahler. The fact that you have to listen closely, sometimes, when he drops the color from his voice (one of several trademark Gerhaherisms), is easily put up with; in fact, it probably enhances the experience – though Harding and his lustily playing orchestra didn’t exactly help out, either. The cries of nocturnal pain in “Um Mitternacht” were harrowing, and “Liebst du um Schönheit” was, interestingly, stripped of any overt cynicism. Mahler didn’t know it, when he composed it, but he custom tailored “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” to Gerhaher’s style. Hearing him suffer, while simultaneously exposing the vanity in the lines “Nor am I all that much concerned / If she should think me dead”, by not so much intoning rather than de-toning them, was as touching as anything.

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In Memoriam Aribert Reimann: His Lear in Frankfurt (2008)

In memory of Aribert Reimann, who passed away on March 13th, nine days after his 88th birthday, I post this hitherto unpublished review of the 2008 Frankfurt Opera premiere of his most important stage work, Lear, in Keith Warner's production. Re-listening to Medea recently, I found myself taken aback by the sheer ugliness of Reimann's music, the "dead-on-arrival avant-garde hideousness", found it to be "joyless, deliberately ungainly music, 30-years behind its time when it premiered in 2010", and how it was "music to feel clever, by pretending to like it." Part of it will have been the lack of visible drama, which, as I suggest below, is important, possibly essential to make anything of this music at all. And, in Lear's defense, it came more than 30 years before Medea. This prompted a brief exchange with a colleague who thought (and wrote), already around the time of the premiere of Lear, that the opera was overrated - to which a critical outcry predictably followed promptly. True: Not all music that is difficult and first appears ungainly is The-Emperor's-New-Clothes-Music. And yet, there is a line, eventually, for each of us, that we would not cross for purely musical purposes. Where is that line and is it important? These are all thoughts that came back up, re-reading my 16-year old review, written with the milk of human kindness still sloshing liberally within me. Perhaps partly not to look the dunce. And partly because it's not like I didn't in enjoy the evening some way. Anyway, here it is.

Aribert Reimann, Lear Wolfgang Koch et al. Frankfurt Opera, S.Weigle Oehms

Aribert Reimann, Medea Frankfurt Opera, E.Nielsen Oehms

Aribert Reimann, Lear Fischer-Dieskaus et al. Bavarian State Opera, G.Albrecht DG

Reimann-Mendelssohn/Schumann, …und soll es Tod bedeuten Song arrangements & SQ4t#3 Petersen Quartet, C.Schäfer Capriccio

Gabor Halasz called Aribert Reimann’s 1978 opera Lear “the great music-theater achievement of the [70s], probably the most important opera since [Bernd Alois] Zimmermann’s The Soldiers. The work’s premiere in Munich – a Jean-Pierre Ponelle production, conducted by Gerd Albrecht and with the work’s initiator Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role and Dieskau’s wife Julia Varady as Cordelia – was a smashing success with critics and audiences alike – even conservative ears.

Dieskau first suggested the topic to Reimann in 1968 and nudged him to pursue it. What Reimann didn’t know until long after he finished his Lear, is that Dieskau also pitched the idea of a Lear-opera to Britten who, however, chose to compose Death in Venice, instead.

How much of Lear’s success depended on Dieskau’s participation and Ponelle’s inspired, beautiful production was once again, for the 21st time, put to the test in the Frankfurt Opera’s season-opening premiere of their Keith Warner production on September 28th. Not very much, as it turns out, as long as the theatrical direction is as extraordinary as it was in Frankfurt.

Lear's effectiveness is critically dependent on the theatrical element and makes a primarily theatrical impression – not unlike Henze’s Bassarids, but without the latter’s relatively luscious grand operatic musical moments. Lear is essentially theater music (a hint of Maurizio Kagel), and its considerable success abroad has undoubtedly been due to the use of the respective vernacular. Like the San Francisco production (where Thomas Stewart took the title role) which used the translation of Desmond Clayton.

The music alone is dense and difficult stuff; wild and loud plenty and even grating at times. Suppose you only read Claus H. Henneberg’s analysis of it: You’d have to imagine a series of shrieking vocal parts and jarring string and brass chord clusters, one piled upon another – interrupted only occasionally with the tone rows that represent Cordelia and Edgar, or the string quartet that accompanies the Fool’s simple songs.

What is true enough in theory gets a life of its own on stage. Even if the tone-rows don’t obviously reveal the relationship between Cordelia and Edgar as being the sole characters aiming at a common, noble goal, the semi-tone steps of their tone rows (Edgar’s is developed out of Cordelia’s by switching the first and last six-note sequences; see below) are in marked and notable contrast to the shrill sounds of Goneril and Regan. Clusters of sounds may dominate much of the score, but since the music works as support for the theatrical element and dramatizes the story with sound, it isn’t (necessarily) perceived as unnecessarily spiky and brutal. Indeed, it was astounding how vividly it depicted the various moods and actions on stage – madness, wistful longing, and of course wickedness and massive brutality. The 30-year-old music, still sounding more modern than much that is composed these days, doesn’t aim to make it easy for the audience, it aims to be true to

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Maurizio Pollini, an Appreciation

Maurizio Pollini was perhaps the most important figure in my musical upbringing that I never knew.

Twenty years ago, on October 27th, 2004, I walked down the aisle of the Kennedy Center’s Orchestra Hall with two* (!) press tickets in my hand, headed towards perfect seats for a Maurizio Pollini recital that Eileen Andrews, then with the Washington Performing Arts Society, had unconscionably handed provided. Row 18 or something, piano left – the first time I had requested review tickets for a “proper” concert where the tickets cost money – an unaffordable sum at a time when a sandwich was a luxury. And I remember keenly thinking to myself: “I will never stop pretending to be a critic!”

Lv.Beethoven, The Late Piano Sonatas Maurizio Pollini DG (1975/77)

Lv.Beethoven, Late Piano Sonatas 101 & 106 Maurizio Pollini DG (2021/22)

Lv.Beethoven, The Piano Concertos Maurizio Pollini, Berlin Phil, C.Abbado DG

L.v.Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas Maurizio Pollini DG

W.A.Mozart, Piano Concertos K.453 & 467 Maurizio Pollini, WPh DG

W.A.Mozart, Piano Concertos K.414 & 491 Maurizio Pollini, WPh DG

Stravinsky, Prokofiev et al., Petrouchka, Sonata No.7...) Maurizio Pollini DG

F.Chopin, Etudes opp.10 & 25 Maurizio Pollini DG

F.Schubert, The 3 late Piano Sonatas & 3 Pieces. Maurizio Pollini DG

I had picked Maurizio Pollini for this attempt at getting review tickets, not only because I wanted to see if that racket might work – but because Maurizio Pollini had long been in my personal Hall of Fame (where Eileen joined him that day). It was his disc of the late Beethoven Sonatas (subject of one of the earliest Dip Your Ears reviews) that hooked me. I innocently picked up in a Best Buy in Fargo, ND, and brought back to my college room. Even played from the rickety boom box, it was an overwhelming experience. The granitic perfection opened my ears not only to Beethoven sonatas, but to an extend to late Beethoven and the fascination of piano sonatas altogether. I imprinted so hard on these performances that it’s sometimes been difficult to properly appreciate anyone else’s opp. 106 or 111.

Later came his Beethoven Piano Concertos, the second recording with Abbado, now with the Berlin Philharmonic, which fascinated me equally, if, alas, less momentously. Years went by until – it would have been in 2004 – I ‘discovered’ his Chopin Études at Tower Records, took them home, and marveled at the sound that came forth. Opus 10/1: Like marbles rushing down a marble staircase. So clean, so precise and pristine, you could hear every note and there wasn’t an ounce of fat or sentimentality anywhere in sight.

These recordings – and the one of the Stravinsky Petrouchka movements – contributed as much to the reputation of Pollini as an ingenious perfectionist of unparalleled technical standards as they did to the stereotype that he was necessarily a cool, unemotional pianist. True, his clear-as-a-brook, granitic playing cleansed the treacle from many romantic piece and offered stunning x-ray views into contemporary works. But this did not always bear out in concert or on record, where he was well capable of considerable warmth. Case in point his (relatively) late live Mozart from Vienna, which is “understated, sunny, and genial… sophisticated in its simplicity…, [even reminiscent] of Keith Jarrett’s Mozart playing, but with ‘warmer’ results…” (MusicWeb review) The days of being a left-wing political firebrand (“Champagne Socialist” was a less kind, if apt, moniker) had by then long been over, but the passion for the music burned unabated.

The recordings also set an almost impossible standard for live performances – those of others but also his own. In the recital in 2004, he still held up to that standard. Two years later, at a recital at Strathmore, he didn’t quite, but still moved and impressed:

Still, even at the least involving, the marvelous soft notes – never shy-sounding – demanded respect… The Ballade No. 1 in G Minor had been bumped up from encore status, last year, to the main program – and it suits Pollini’s rigor, his iron-frame rubato much better. Those who like his style in Chopin (it’s not the leaves that shake on the tree, the whole trunk is slowly moving), are invariably fascinated by his approach.

More recently, I wrote for Forbes.com and LISTEN Magazine about his Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle, a project that he took 39 years to complete:

Beethoven Sonata cycles used to be monuments. Milestones. For a pianist today, a Beethoven Sonata cycle has become more of an ultimate business card, which is why we see so many of them. But one cycle issued last year is still a monument amid business cards: Maurizio Pollini’s. After four decades in the making, it has every bit the feel of a classic, like Kempff, Arrau, Backhaus, or Brendel. That's partly because Pollini is one of the last active titans of the ivories, and partly because the set is anchored around his towering, legendary 1975/77 recording of the last sonatas. His Hammerklavier is a pianistic Matterhorn, imposing and awesome. Thomas Mann spent a whole chapter in Dr. Faustus on op.111. Listening to Pollini, you wonder why not an entire book.

Somewhere in between, I actually met the man for a brief second, crossing the floor of an empty Philharmonic Hall in Munich, during or before or after rehearsals. Overcoming the (appropriate!) reticence, I approached my idol, pitched some awkward idea and made an even equally lame compliment, which was met with courteous disinterest. On greeting or parting I shook his hand, quite seemingly against his will, but he was too polite not to go through the motions and put his hand in mine, where it briefly lied, like an anesthetized squid. In my defense: I felt an acute and lasting sense of shame and remorse.

I last saw Maurizio Pollini at his final penultimate recital in Vienna (review Wiener Zeitung), in the summer of 2021, at the Musikverein, within weeks of hearing Daniel Barenboim play the same hall. This battle of the dinosaurs, not that it was billed as such, made for instructive listening. That the latter performed Beethoven-as-Bruckner was one thing. One can like it or not. Mistakes in the heat of the passion are also one thing; only curmudgeons begrudge ’em. But the visibly – or seemingly – unmotivated, lazy sloppiness was hard to forgive. Even when you almost knew that you could expect as little. Barenboim made every indication of not giving a damn, played through his recital, and collected the rapturous applause he knew he was going to get, no matter what he did.

Further reading: Andrew Ford, "The clarity of Maurizio Pollini" (Inside Story, 2017).

Quite different Maurizio Pollini, born in Milan, on January 5th, 1942, and just ten months older than Barenboim. When he had given his first recital at the Musikverein, 60 years prior, my mom was still in high school. Now – in '21 – he still attacked every note with the same intensity and expectation of perfection as he had so long been able to do, unwilling to make any concessions. But in several places, like Schumann’s op.18 Fantasie or Chopin’s B minor Sonata, the hands no longer did his bidding in the way he wanted and he grumbled along, and every slip seemed to upset him. The tender moments were breath-taking, still, even if not everything was, strictly speaking, at the highest pianistic level anymore. And then for the Berceuse op.57 and the Polonaise Héroïque, it was back: That absolutely even touch, where every note, no matter which finger takes it, is perfectly even.

The ovations were the ovations not just for that night, but a veritable lifetime achievement award. The audience, myself appreciatingly among them, well knew that this might have been the last time they heard a legend live – and it was. He may have heard his last applause, but Maurizio will live on in the gratitude of music-lovers for a long, long time. Mille grazie per tutto, Maestro.

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P.S. If you want to hear Pollini perform Stockhausen's Klavierstück X, you can/should do so here. No matter how you feel about the music or Stockhausen in general, it is an amazing feat and something to behold.

* With me was ionarts' Charles Downey, who thus celebrated the birth of his first kid, earlier in the day.

Critic’s Notebook: Gunar Letzbor, Telemann, and Other Baroque Encounters

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Seltene barocke Erscheinungen

Tits'n'Telemann

J.P.v.Westhoff, Sei Partite a Violino Gunar Letzbor Arcana

G.P.Telemann, 2 Fantasias for Solo Violin Gunar Letzbor Pan Classics

J.J.Vilsmayr, Artificosus Concentus pro Camera Gunar Letzbor Arcana

J.S.Bach, Solo Sonatas (BWV 1001, 1003, 1005) Gunar Letzbor Pan Classics

Curious concert I was asked to attend. First of all, it happened in the Vienna Konzerthaus’ smallest main hall, the gorgeous, bright, yellow but uneconomic 320-seat Schubert Saal. It’s the hall where the Alban Berg Quartet got their start before attracting the following that allowed them to graduate to the Mozart Saal and eventually play their respective recitals twice in that hall to satisfy demand. Now, if it is used at all, it’s usually rented out for concerts or events… except, apparently, for the “Zyklus Ars Antiqua Austria”, which is part of the Konzerthaus’ official programming, featuring Gunar Letzbor and his early music ensemble in a series of 3+1 concerts.

On February 25th, I was at the "+1", called “Bach in Private” – and it was a one-man show with Gunar Letzbor and his baroque violin. Very casual and informal in feel, a Bachiana if you will, and I wouldn’t be half surprised if Letzbor knows every one of his subscribers by name. (The hall was about half full.) He started with a long anecdote of driving across the Alps a few nights before, with snow-related mishaps and adventures. Then he elaborated on Johann Paul Westhoff, the “father of solo violin music”, who invented his own ‘dual’ system of notation on eight-line staves and two clefs as a means to early copyright protection) and proceeded to perform, by way of example, Westhoff’s Suite No.6 in D-major. The ear grasps for the nearest known music, which is of course Bach, an involuntary act that might distract from the Westhoff Suite’s originality. Similarities exist, of course, but the differences are considerable and there’s an archaic nature that came through nicely, as Letzbor worked hard on the Suite’s four movements.

Telemann (another – very important – copyright champion of his time) is only 25 years older than Westhoff. Yet, his Fantasie No.9, already marks the end of the baroque period whereas Westhoff’s Suite had opened it for that type of composition. There’s a definite flirting with the Galant style going on here, on Georg Philipp’s part, while the Fantasie No.4 is still rather more demure and academic. Speaking of “flirting”: There were three young characters in the concert that didn’t look like your typical “Ars Antiqua” subscription holders. A young lad, I hesitate to call him “gentleman”, looked so ostentatiously bored, that we would have believed him, even if he hadn’t tried to quietly talk on his phone during the performance of the Westhoff. After the Suite, an audience member informed him, in no uncertain words, about the finer points of concert etiquette, which resulted in sulking looks from one of the young ladies in his company and more ostentatious ennui from the communicative offender.

If you thought this was bizarre, it got a lot better, still. Evidently energized by the Telemann, the third of the group, a female perhaps in her very early 20s, got up mid-Suite and carefully un-peeled herself from her jacket and sweater, inviting a view of her pushed-up assets. After each of the Suites, she jumped up to launch into something resembling a standing ovation, carefully bouncing up and down while daintily clapping at Letzbor’s performance. There seemed to be something of a look of pride in her carefully done-up face, as she juggled standard violin-recital behavior with her early-music love, which so clearly was beating strongly beneath that liberally exposed cleavage. Once done with this performance, she proceeded, still standing, still in the middle of the concert, to get dressed again… and marched, her two friends in tow, out of the Schubert Saal, still before intermission, unconscionably missing the nine-partite Johann Joseph Vilsmayr Partita No.4 in D major that followed. Not that the mind easily shifted back to this excerpt from the 1715 “Artificiosus conceptus pro camera”, after that equally rare earlier baroque display… but the little lecture on scordatura, and the bagpipe character that the violin developed in sections of the nicely flowing, even groovy Partita, did eventually recapture the imagination of the baffled and bemused audience.

For the concluding Bach Partita No.1, the preceding talk about the ancient technique of “diminution” that Bach employs in this work, actually helped to hear the work in a different light; mere variations became audible intensifications of the preceding movements, once the Double hits on each of the movements. The performance was as sympathetic as the preceding ones had been; hardly perfect – but somehow that was never quite the point. Rather, it felt as though one had joined an acquaintance for a performance-lecture (I was reminded of a Charles Rosen performance at La Maison Française from years ago). This impression only deepened, when Letzbor reprised the Sarabande, playing it in an entirely different style as just before, now more forward-thrusting, mellifluous, lighter. A nice cap to a baroque geek’s perfect delightful night of hearing and learning. (A shame that @SugarTitz97 missed it.)

Photo © Gunar Letzbor?

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