Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: Alexei Lubimov Supreme In Ives, Webern, Berg

...The main ingredient of this recital is the grand Charles Ives “Concord” Sonata, which has been well recorded in the last decade or so. This 40 to 55-minute masterpiece is brimming with Ivesian imagination and techniques, and it is one of the Ives compositions that works best on the ultimately limited format that is recorded music. (See also: Classical CD Of The Week: Charles Ives Down Under) Like most anything of Ives’, the sophistication is in the composition’s construction and its thousands of musical references (Beethoven, hymns, folk songs etc.), but the proof is in the listening. You could turn it into a “guess-the-quoted-composer” game, but I greatly prefer to listen to Ives with an element of benevolent naiveté. To me, it’s a quilt – which, incidentally, is a most American way of composing...

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Alexei Lubimov Supreme In Ives, Webern, Berg

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Takács Quartet @ KC

Franck, Piano Quintet / Debussy, String Quartet, M.-A. Hamelin, Takács Quartet (Hyperion, 2016)

We used to hear the Takács Quartet more frequently in the Washington area. As long as they come back to these parts every year or two, Ionarts can probably survive. The most recent chance to hear them was on Wednesday evening, presented again by the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. In between we remain on the life support of recordings, which the group continues to release at the rate of one or two each year. Although the two founding members, second violinist Károly Schranz and cellist András Féjer, are not getting any younger, the quartet adds to its discography at a dizzying pace, always hungry for new vistas in the repertoire. The next disc, available next month, combines music by Franck and Debussy.

Something about the opening work on this program, Dvořák's 14th string quartet (A-flat major, op. 105), just did not sit right. The first movement is somewhat episodic, and the many stops and starts did not always sound unified. The scherzo, with its furiant-like hemiola shifts, was light and even more relaxed in tempo in the trio, but by the third movement there was the sense that maybe the golden era of the Takács had come and gone, with intonation issues cropping up and the feeling that the work had not been fully digested. Happily, what followed this less than polished rendition showed it was only a fluke, a rare example of the Takács missing the target and not a sign of general decline.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, The dependable artistry of Takács Quartet (Washington Post, April 22)

In the rest of the evening's selections, the group was back in their accustomed sweet spot, beginning with Webern's youthful, tragic Langsamer Satz from 1905. The piece is labeled "in E-flat major," which should be enough to signal that it is not the Webern you might expect. The Takács teased out the carefully layered voices and lush harmonies, always clearly putting one in the foreground over the others, balanced even in the loudest sections.

The third of Beethoven's "Razumovsky" quartets (C major, op. 59/3) was even more winning, from the enigmatic opening chords, which proceed by sneaky chromatic shifts from an F# fully diminished seventh chord to C major. The fast section was chatty and charming, mercurial but not overly fast, and the drawn-out setup of the recapitulation was excellent, as was first violinist Edward Dusinberre on the little cadenza moment. All in all, an eye-twinkler of a piece, followed by wonderful, warm viola solos in the slow movement, with the cello staying extra-soft on the pizzicato accompaniment. This movement's restraint and dark quality are so Takács, and no one does this melancholy tone better. The Menuetto was a contrast, ultra-genial in nature, with the first violin's ornamented lines in the trio not overshadowing the melody. The concluding fugal finale was fun and fleet, the wry side of the Takács sound.

Ionarts-at-Large: Aussies Rock Viennese Classics in Vienna

“Haydn solves all Problems!”

After getting happily bogged down in questions of audience, expectation, tradition, (bad) listening habits, and how to bring ears to repertoire they are likely to love but not know, time runs out for the brief interview with Richard Tognetti, backstage at the Wiener Konzerthaus, because he is off to practice before the first of two concerts—the last of the orchestra’s European tour. So I turn my last two points of proposed discussion (the above Haydn-utterance and “Chamber music is at the heart of music-appreciation”) into Yes-or-No answers.

J.S.Bach, Keyboard Concerti v.2 (BWV1053-57), Angela Hewitt / Australian CO Hyperion

Tognetti jumps in with the affirmative. “I couldn’t agree more.” He elaborates in the doorway: “True for listeners, but also for musicians… and if you can play Haydn well, you can play anything. And an orchestra doesn’t play Haydn well, do we trust them with the rest of the program?”

I’d forgotten that the Australian Chamber Orchestra (first appearing on my radar, on record, 10 years ago) performed a Haydn Symphony to open its Konzerthaus-concert, otherwise I might have less emphasized the point of orchestra abusing Haydn as the throw-away, instead of playing it last, where it belongs. Then again, if you play Haydn like the ACO ended up playing him, orchestras might as well play it wherever they please. No complauding™* necessary.

Said Haydn from the ACO, the “Chicken” Symphony No.83—was harsh, in the better, electrifying sense, with dynamic liveliness and spunk, pianissimo tic-tocs in the Andante that one might expect in a really HIP and truly great Four Seasons performance, a choosing of character over beauty everywhere, but with plenty beauty still, and a finale with instrumentalists like rambunctious doggies tearing at a piece of expensive curtain. What an appetizer. The applause at the end of the opening Allegro a.) proved that particular interpretative approach

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Hats off for Martin Helmchen

Martin Helmchen, winner of the Clara Haskil Competition in 2001, when he was not yet 20 years old, has come in for a lot of praise in these pages, in Schubert, Shostakovich, and more Schubert. It is a thrill to have one's expectations for a performer, on the basis of his recordings (he signed with PentaTone in 2007), be exceeded on hearing him live. This is what happened at Helmchen's Washington debut recital, presented by Washington Performing Arts on Saturday afternoon in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, where he leaped to or at least near the top of my estimation among performers of every composer whose music he played. Since WPAS President Jenny Bilfield was not in the audience, undoubtedly preparing for the WPAS Gala later that evening, let me say that if Helmchen is willing to come back to Washington every other year, WPAS should host him regularly. (Perhaps a duo recital with his wife, cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, too.)

First, there was Bach, the fourth partita (D major, BWV 828), which showcased many sides of Helmchen's playing, starting with a big, brassy touch in the Overture, the dotted section powered by velvety runs and with a crank-up of energy on the repeat, leading to fun embellishments. In the fugal section, he layered the contrapuntal voices with different kinds of articulations, his foot light on the sustaining pedal. The Allemande had a completely different, scaled-down feel, like an intimate dance in which Helmchen caressed each unusual harmonic area and curl of melody. The Courante was back to a bigger sound, but without the jagged tune cutting the ears, and in the Aria, Helmchen took all sorts of rhythmic liberties, like a singer taking care with the words, full of verve. No one can play this partita without coming up with a solution to the little solo right-hand flight of fancy in the Sarabande: Helmchen did not add any pedal, just allowed it to twist off into its own quirky thoughts, letting it hang there, glimmering. The addition of some notes inégales to the Menuett showed a familiarity with Baroque harpsichord specialists, and the Gigue left no doubts as to Helmchen's technical prowess.

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Anton Webern, Langsamer Satz, and the Belcea Quartet

…Krzysztof Chorzelski, the violist of the Belcea Quartet bemoans at the Dinner after their performance in the Mozart Saal that he missed the Camerata Salzburg with Philippe Herreweghe performing Beethoven and Chopin the night they were giving their first of their two Purcell-Haydn-Britten recitals. “If I had known, I would have gone to that concert instead” he laughs. “It’s so frustrating to play String Quartet all the time and miss concerts like that.” If he had arrived a day earlier, taken a little more time, we suggest, he could have caught the first performance without playing hookey from his own gig. “I think that’s what we’re planning to do in the future, actually”, he responds in earnest. And follows up eagerly: “Is there something we shouldn’t miss on the night we arrive next time?”

We excitedly tell Chorzelski about the Freiburger Barockorchester and their titillating all-Schumann Concerto nights with Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust, and Jean-Guihen Queyras and his eyes light up. “Nice. What a fantastic lineup. What a fantastic thing to play all the concertos. Is it on the 24th, or 25th?” It takes a while until we realize that we’re talking April, while the Belcea Quartet next date with Piotr Anderszewski (Webern, Beethoven, Shostakovich) is already this month. The concert they will miss instead is the first of the two San Francisco Symphony performances. Chorzelski knows about it already: “Ah, the one with Julia Fischer playing Prokofiev.” That’s quality stuff, but the hidden gem of interest could well be the Charles Ives “Concord Sonata”, orchestrated. (Well, one movement at least.) “Oh my God! That’s amazing. I heard the Concord Sonata once live, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard…” With or without the…” “With the flute, yes! Wow, it’s a fantastic idea.”


The idea was to talk about Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz, but now we’re solidly side-tracked on Ives. I confess to never quite having …

Continue here, at the Konzerthaus Magazin.

Anton Webern: Langsamer Satz

The Belcea Quartett plays Anton Webern's «Langsamer Satz» in the Mozart-Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wednesday, March 26th, 2014

For those interested, you can read more about «Langsamer Satz» in the interview with the Belcea Quartet's Violist Krzysztof Chorzelski on the online Magazine of the Wiener Konzerthaus here: http://bit.ly/1hAUXPY

Dip Your Ears, No. 146 (Christine Schäfer Sings SchoenBerg)

Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, String Quartet no.2, Langsamer Satz, Largo desolato, Petersen Quartett & Christine Schäfer Capriccio

This is a CD that elicits raves and frustration. The excellent Petersen Quartet teams up with the sublime Christine Schäfer and present us Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet op.10 (for two violins, viola, cello and soprano), Anton Webern’s heavenly Langsamer Satz, and Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite with the “secret part for voice” that was found out to exist some time in the late 70s. It’d be a dream of a CD if you appreciate the tamer, romantic reaches of the Second Viennese School. Except that for some reason Phoenix Edition (the unofficial successor to Capriccio) decided that they would not record the complete Lyric Suite, but only the “Largo desolato” that contains the vocal part.

Normally I’d try to view this not as an incomplete CD with the first five movements of the Lyric Suite missing, but as a CD which throws that last movement in as a bonus. But with a running time of 47 minutes, that’s a little difficult. I don’t usually mind CDs with a short run-time, either. There is no point in squeezing extra material onto a finished product for the sake of playing-time. But the two issues in combination, and seeing how the rest of the Lyric Suite would have brought this recording up to a good hour of music, it’s difficult not to feel a little cheated. Especially since the playing and especially the singing is so excellent throughout, that the CD really ought to be heard by anyone who loves the Berg and Schoenberg pieces.

Schoenberg’s Second Quartet (op.10) is easily digestible stuff when compared to his Third – its chromatic intensity veering much more towards the romantic idiom than the modernist. Little wonder then, that it’s the most commonly recorded of Schoenberg’s five string quartets. Born out domestic crisis (Gustav Mahler had left for America and Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde associated all-too closely with their common friend, the painter Richard Gerstl, who consequently killed himself), he composed the four movements between March 1907 and July 1908. The strained tonality (f-sharp minor, C-major, a-minor, d-minor, e-flat minor) makes for a feeling of faint harmonic familiarity throughout, even as the tonal relationships begin to dissolve. That’s particularly notable when Schoenberg adds the voice to his string quartet, the first time that the traditional boundaries of the string quartet had been thus expanded. Two poems by Stefan George – “Litany” and “Rapture” – form movements three and four.

Previously published on WETA. See also "Second Viennoiserie (12.7.11)

From the 2012 ARD Competition, Day 7

Day 7, String Quartets, Semi Finals

Six string quartets (performers) and 18 string quartets (compositions) in just under nine hours is something you will not likely experience anywhere outside the ARD Music Competition. It’s a marathon, exhausting and gratifying, and particularly insightful when it comes to the ARD commissioned competition that participants of the semi final are required to play.

For the String Quartets in 2012, that was a composition by Erkki-Sven Tüür, Lost Prayers—his second string quartet, which is quite easy on the ears, comprehensible, not all too novel, and full of musical references that the ear consecutively grasps after one, two, three hearings. Notably there is a general kinship with Gregorian, or Schütz-like sentiments (not surprising if you know his Wanderer's Evening Song), there are long dramatic arches that emerge, and also hints—but just half a second long—of extreme romanticism. It’s a work that pays homage to the string quartet tradition, and continues it… written expressively for the instruments, not against them. If it’s a little tedious in its constant stymied run-ups that are lost in flageolet notes before the whole shebang starts over again until it finally reaches fruition after the eleventh or so time… well, it’s also a lot better than this commissioned piece could have been. The voices—this year and those from 2009—should know what I mean.

The Acies Quartet (Benjamin Ziervogel & Raphael Kasprian, violins, Manfred Plessl, viola, Thomas Wiesflecker, cello), experienced favorites, were the first to go—which meant the world premiere performance for Lost Prayers. Every hearing of a new work is a learning experience, even with the very readable score on one’s lap, but the Acies’ transparent, nuanced, gently lit account was just about ideal for a first listening. Rather than single-mindedly reciting the text in front of them, they made their own (though perhaps not Tüür’s) musical sense of it, even if that meant not slavishly following every dynamic marking, or lack thereof.

The Novus Quartet (Jae-young Kim & Young-Uk Kim, Violins, Seung-won Lee, Viola, Woong-whee Moon, Cello – from the Korea National University of Arts) went about it differently, informed perhaps by a desperate instinct to get as much sentiment out of the work as it lends itself to—which is a

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Orion String Quartet

Charles T. Downey, Orion String Quartet at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, November 3, 2011

L. Kirchner, Complete String Quartets, Orion String Quartet

Have you ever had one of those nights? It happened to the Orion String Quartet on Tuesday night, at the end of its latest appearance in the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

It would have been enough for violist Steven Tenenbom to have broken a string in the first movement of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15. But when first violinist Daniel Phillips started in on the fourth movement, when he was supposed to be playing the third, one could be excused for thinking that some post-Halloween curse was in operation. The musicians, to their credit, reacted as gracefully as one can in these circumstances, by laughing at themselves. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Orion String Quartet and Windscape take on the visionary Bach (Washington Post, February 17, 2011)

Stephen Brookes, The Orion Quartet (Washington Post, March 1, 2008)

Second Viennoiserie

Berg / Webern / Schoenberg, Quatuor Diotima, S. Piau, M.-N. Lemieux (released on February 22, 2011) Naïve V 5240 | 64'23"

The Quatuor Diotima has captivated my ears enough times, both in concert and on disc, that the names of two favorite singers, Sandrine Piau and Marie-Nicole Lemieux, were only the icing on the pastry of this recent release. The program brings together three pieces for string quartet and solo voice, by the big three composers of the Second Viennese School. This is a combination that was somewhat in vogue in the 20th century, as composers looked for ways to revive the string quartet genre after it had run out of steam in the previous century. The other examples that come to mind, like Ginastera's third quartet or Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge, are really song cycles with string quartet accompaniment. The Diotima proceeds from Schoenberg's second quartet, with its third and fourth movements with Piau, radiant and enigmatic, to two oddities. Webern's six bagatelles, op. 9, each no more than a delightfully unexpected sonic bite, are presented with the lagniappe of a seventh bagatelle, never published, with a truly odd little poem sung in the velvety contralto of Lemieux, a compressed expression of grief for the composer's dead mother. For good measure, they include Berg's gorgeous Lyric Suite, in the recently restored version with a vocal part added to the Largo Desolato movement: the hidden words that reveal the amorous program of the work are a poem by Baudelaire, a blasphemous paraphrase of Psalm 129, with the lover crying out to his beloved when he is unable to sleep. That the final work is recorded complete lifts this disc over a similar disc released by the Petersen Quartett a couple years ago, with Christine Schäfer on the soprano part, as good as it apparently was.

New Wind Blowing at the NSO

Mahler, Symphony No. 4, D. Upshaw, Cleveland Orchestra, C. von Dohnányi

Christoph Eschenbach's home run streak in his first season with the National Symphony Orchestra continued this weekend, with a program of luscious, evocative pieces at the near edge of tonality. It was hardly the sort of program that should have turned audiences away, even with the name Webern on it, and there were not too many empty seats at the final performance on Saturday evening. The Webern selection was the brief Im Sommerwind, last heard from the NSO two years ago, a glimpse into what might have been if Webern had not responded to Schoenberg's advertisement for students and followed his first inclinations toward Mahler and Strauss instead. (No, as Tim Smith overheard, it has nothing to do with the song A Summer Wind.) From the organ-like deep chords of the opening, to the shimmering chords and bird-wild trills, this is a compact piece with a vast tone poem-like sweep, with Mahler-esque chamber-like arrangements and much other orchestrational whizbangery. All those perfumed fin-de-siècle sighs and exhalations in the piece were inspired by a poem in Bruno Wille's book Revelations of a Juniper Tree (read an excerpt in these program notes -- .PDF file).

Does Osvaldo Golijov have too many commissions on his plate? He already had a reputation for pushing deadlines to the last possible minute, but this year and last he has had to cancel the premieres of some new pieces -- for the Los Angeles Philharmonic (twice) and the St. Lawrence String Quartet -- because he could not complete them on time. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has a "new work" by Golijov (title TBD) on its schedule this year (June 2 to 5) but hopefully the trend will not continue there. [Although the information is not on the BSO Web site yet, the piece in question is Sidereus, which was premiered last fall in Memphis. -- Ed.] The Golijov on the NSO program was She Was Here, commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2008 and dedicated to the memory of Anthony Minghella. Beloved soprano Dawn Upshaw, who premiered the work, was back in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, sounding perhaps less angelic than in previous hearings but more intense and musically sensitive. The melodies, most of them, are Schubert's, because the piece is essentially only an orchestration of four Schubert Lieder. This is not meant to disparage the work, which had some magical effects, but it reinforces my belief that Golijov is in the wrong place in the concert hall and should instead be writing evocative film scores. He has a fine vocabulary of Holstian celesta twinkles, chimes, glassy harmonics, and glints of bowed crotales to work with.

Other Articlews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach conducts Webern, Mahler and Golijov (Washington Post, April 8) Tim Smith, Exquisite music-making from Eschenbach, Upshaw, National Symphony (Baltimore Sun, April 9) Terry Ponick, Upshaw, Eschenbach, NSO in late-Romantic quest (Washington Times, April 9) Emily Cary, Dawn Upshaw takes stage with National Symphony Orchestra (Washington Examiner, April 6)

The main attraction was a joyous, even raucous performance of Mahler's fourth symphony (see our notes on performances by Bernstein, Zinman, Alsop). Here, as in the earlier pieces, Eschenbach's ideas seemed fully formed from the first downbeat, buoyant and flexible with the pacing, sorting out the many transitions with no stumbles: this being the third performance of the program probably did not hurt the execution, either. You can get an idea of Eschenbach's ideas for the work in his performance with the Orchestre de Paris, available in an online video. The first movement was genially paced, taking the tempo marking "Nicht eilen" at face value, and the second more stately then macabre (again "ohne Hast"), with concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef sounding properly a little raw and steely on the scordatura violin solo. The slow movement was more peaceful than merely slow, with the pianissimo strings, sounding malleable and warm, creating a downy pillow of sound. The fourth movement's homey vision of heaven, where St. Cecilia is the Kapellmeisterin, again highlighted Upshaw's round-toned voice, allowed plenty of space by Eschenbach and the musicians who kept their sound in hushed wonder at the crucial moments. A long and deserved silence at the conclusion was punctuated by a perfectly timed cell phone ringing at the back of the hall.

Mahler Cycle | Concertgebouw | Boulez | M7

Amsterdam, with your crooked and badly isolated houses, legions of second hand and used-anything stores, restaurants that close at nine, grimy-wet winter days, awful hotels, dirty canals, expensive and rickety public transportation, pervading sense of dilapidation, your grossly exaggerated focus on secondary and tertiary pleasures and cheap ticky-tacky-selling tourist gift shops, be still my beating heart as long as you contain in your midst one of the world’s most lovely concert halls and in it “The World’s Best Orchestra”.

The opportunities to hear Pierre Boulez conduct are, let’s be honest, acutely limited. So the chance to witness him in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony was an obvious and welcome excuse to go to Amsterdam, even in the uninviting month of January. And what better cast—at least on paper—than Boulez and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra could one get for hearing that elusive Mahler Seventh for the first time in concert? After all, the RCO’s Mahler credentials are nonpareil and Boulez’ recording with Cleveland is one of the outstanding contributions to the discography.

In rehearsal, unaware of the program apart from Mahler and assuming—rather than paying attention—that Boulez was mixing things up with one of his compositions, I thought to myself: “Oh, Pierre, you just pretend to be so avant-garde but you’re really a bleeding heart romantic at heart.” Egg on my face, seeing how he was rehearsing Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, op.6. Then again, an unabashed romantic is of course exactly what Webern is. And the reaction might go to show that this romantic mooring of the Second Viennese schoolboys would be so more obvious to the listener if he or she came expecting Boulez, rather than romantic standards set by Der Rosenkavalier or the ‘Rhenish’ Symphony.

In concert, Six Pieces (in the original 1909 version) flit by in no time at all—rousing and enchanting en route, riveting and challenging to the ears. Piercing woodwinds, heralding trumpets, and distilled genius (if you’ve got the taste for it) made this—despite rampant coughing—in the very literal sense uncommonly beautiful.

G.Mahler, Symphony No.7, Boulez / Cleveland - DG

A.Webern, 6 Pieces et al., Boulez / BPh - DG

In a way, the works is the perfect introduction to the inner movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, except that Pierre Boulez doesn’t go for shades of night or spookiness in this work. I struggle in vain to grasp that symphony as it is, but I get closest to having a grip when the Nachtmusik is actually nocturne-like, moonlit and mysterious, a nervously flittering intermezzo with Ligeti-String-Quartet-like crawling bugs and shadows amidst. Boulez chooses a route that strikes me more like a Haydn Andante, bright and chirpy, with gay dances and Schuhplattlering cows. That’s a difference in perception, but nothing that made any of these three movements less excellent. The timpanist’s clipped end of the Scherzo was full of wit, the first Nachtmusik soft-hued, not unlike a battalion of men marching from evening into night—determined rather than sentimental. Only the cowbells didn’t fit the picture, sounding more like some arthritic bovine stumbling through an ironmongery than ringing of musical cow paraphernalia wafting up down from alpine pastures. Boulez would have been justified to take a page from the Bruce Dickinson’s playbook and ask the percussionist(s) to “really explore the space”.

In the first movement Boulez didn’t linger—he got right into the gritty business and led the orchestra like a little metronome, steady, subtle, and with small clockwork movements. If and when he wants a triple fortissimo orchestral crash, he doesn’t fling his limbs about, he tells the players beforehand. Boulez doesn’t emote for the orchestra, he just provides the pulse. But that doesn’t make his interpretations any less emotional. Amid superb contributions from trombones, trumpets, and Wagner tuba, the first movement was a scorcher. The finale was a massive, a wonderful noise, jocular witch clenched teeth… Mahler’s ambiguously jubilant Meistersinger send-up (and the finale of Tristan & Isolde’s first act) ever obvious. In short: an evening befitting the great Mahler moments that must have taken place in the Grote Zaal of the Concertgebouw. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that the best seats in the hall—Balcony Front, Row 1, Seat Sixties-something—are the ones right above the plaque that bears Mahler’s name.

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 15th and last for 2010 )Simon Rattle in Mahler’s 11th Symphony

Berlin Philharmonic • Simon Rattle • Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Wagner

You can tell that the Salzburg Festival is wrapping up when the local camera teams, trying to catch a glimpse of B- and C-celebrities, are thinning out, when outside seating at the Triangel restaurant across from the Festspielhaus becomes easily attainable, when the days get notably shorter than they were at the height of July and the temperature drops. The spot of the Festival’s last orchestral concert traditionally belongs to the Berlin Philharmonic, and after the out-of-this-world Firebird from the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mariss Jansons, the Berliners under Sir Simon Rattle had to do something very special to see that their appearance would not be an anti-climax.

The Pieces Are Coming Together

Fortunately, they did have something special on offer, namely the programming. After Wagner’s Parsifal Vorspiel and Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Karita Mattila, Sir Simon programmed a veritable Second Viennese School workshop: Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces op.16 (1909), Anton Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra op.6b (1909, rev. 1928), and Alban Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces op.6 (1914, rev. 1929). In a very succinct introduction, Rattle asked to abstain from applause between the works, so that they might be appreciated as a triptych, “…or more—maybe even as an imaginary 11^th Symphony of Gustav Mahler.”

What a daring, good program. Not so much a crowd pleaser as it is a taste-builder. This wasn’t going to elicit the ecstatic applause the Concertgebouw got post-Stravinsky, and indeed many in the audience fled pretty much immediately after the March from Berg’s 3 Pieces ended, but every disturbed set of ears was matched by a grateful, spellbound set that got lost in Schoenberg, Webern, Berg. Spellbound by the yearning love that Webern’s opening “Langsam” exudes, the cautious restlessness and search of “Bewegt”, the sweet longing of “Mäßig”, the looming, cloudy slowness of “Sehr Mäßig”, the road to serenity in “Sehr langsam”, or the mourning in the final “Langsam”. By the impossibly compelling climaxes of the “Präludium. Langsam” in Berg (finally putting an end to all distracted coughing), the audible heartbeat in “Reigen. Anfangs etwas zögernd – Leicht beschwingt”… by the rousing, gripping “Marsch. Mäßiges Marschtempo“, with Wozzeck bleeding through the score. One of Berg’s great skills is that he can cumulate climaxes, one after the other, without losing any tension in the stops, only re-gripping to further tighten the screws. The trombones, finally, burst out (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District-style) with a sexuality that belies any ideas of dry, theoretic dodecaphonic music.

Wagner from the Fridge

The Berliners, though distracted by a hearing-aid with its high-pitched feedback that reared its ugly head throughout, traded some of their perfection for grit and brawn, made Rattle proud and many in the audience very happy, indeed. That their Second Viennese School ended up more moving and romantic than the first part of the program was partly due to their excellence in the latter, partly due to blasé Wagner and cold Strauss. With little mysticism, nor even the absolute precision they are uniquely capable of under Rattle, Parsifal was more stuffer than spiritual experience. And The Four Last Songs, insensitive to Karita Mattila’s need to sing through the wall of sound around her, didn’t stir, didn’t move, and would have been unintelligible even if Rattle had taken his band back whenever he realized that Mattila was in trouble. Mattila was warmly received from the audience anyway, and half sang, half yelled a Straussian “Habet Dank” back at them, but the best thing about her that night was a tastefully purple, body-hugging dress that, in sharp departure from a dress recently worn during Strauss in Munich, didn’t make her look like a GDR shot putter.

Outside the Festspielhaus an old but sharp lady approached me, shaking her head about that ‘modern, newfangled music’, and how she could not be expected to like it, or applaud after it. Since I wasn’t going to pretend to agree, I tried to make the Second Viennese School slightly more palatable to her in the gentlest terms possible, suggesting that if she—by her own admission—could find it impressive or even rousing, just not beautiful, she was already three quarters of the way down the road to appreciating it. ‘Beauty’, in the conventional sense, isn’t the point of these works, but then that isn’t the point of something like Le Sacre (which she likes), either. And I couldn’t help point out that, and I went about this tactfully, the music she just heard and found so awfully ‘new’ was older even than she. There we are: A century later, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg are still poster boys for “New” music.

• • ♥ • •

Later that night the Berlin-bound Jürgen Flimm, the Intendant of the Festival for the last four years, threw a little parting party at the Triangel that marked the end of his reign. Markus Hinterhaeuser, the mind behind the concert series and the new music programs at the Festival, is responsible for the tantalizing next season, which includes Claus Guth's complete DaPonte/Mozart cycle (Minkowski, Nezét-Séguin, Ticciati), a Frau ohne Schatten with Christian Thielemann conducting and Christof Loy directing, and Esa-Pekka Salonen in Janáček’s The Makropulos Case. After that, it will be up the experienced (ex-) Zurich Intendant Alexander Pereira to take the reins, a choice that especially the modern music enthusiasts among the Salzburg Festival audience fear might be a leap backwards but should be rich in populisms.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Munich Chamber Orchestra Opens Season in the Hereafter

Schubert, Orchestrated Songs (Webern et al.), von Otter, Quasthoff / Abbado / Ch.O.of Europe DG .com .co.uk .de .fr

Britten, Serenade for Tenor, Horn & String Orchestra et al., Neil Mackie, Barry Tuckwell / Bedford / Scottish Ch.O. EMI .com .co.uk .de .fr

Schubert, Symphonies No.7(8) & 4, Giulini / BRSO Sony .com .co.uk .de .fr

The Munich Chamber Orchestra (MKO) is a local musical force to be reckoned with—so much I knew from their recordings on ECM and the appearances at the ARD Music Competition. At the latter, the orchestra around a core of 25 players and music director Alexander Liebreich, proved that they even play with the utmost dedication when they are just ‘hired hands’, performing repertoire not of their choosing. That’s when an orchestra’s character really shows.

Why I have not made it to any of their concerts in the last two years, I do not know. And had it not been for a colleague’s last-minute reminder, I might have missed their opening concert of the 2009/2010 season, too. It would have been entirely my loss as the program titled “Hereafter” was an enticing mix of superbly played Mozart, Britten, Schubert, and 20^th century French composer Claude Vivier (1948-1983). The Don Giovanni Overture already told of the darkly dramatic finale with its explosive and crisp execution; so few musicians, so much sound! One wonders if the whole opera could be played so vigorously (and if, whether they could sub for the Bavarian State Orchestra in the upcoming Don Giovanni production).

Claude Vivier’s “Zipangu” for String Orchestra is music of clear lines and bright repetition over a double bass drone. The mildly Asiatic flavor of his travels to Japan and Iran is faintly audible. The central dirge sounds like lonely birds on a winter day, the increasingly astringent violins approximate chalk on a blackboard. It makes for captivating, not necessarily conventional but ‘tame’, modern music that furthered the ashen mood of the program.

Christoph Prégardien and Franz Draxinger took to Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, op.31. For the Prologue and Epilogue, Draxinger used a natural horn (the MKO’s brass uses original instruments, wherever the repertoire allows), and his performance was no less impressive for the occasional, almost inevitable glitches. Prégardien’s tenor has to rely heavily on technique for the high notes which were not always the last word in security or beauty. Fortunately intelligence can compensate much—limited projection and range, for example—in a work like the Serenade. It did, and the result was very fine… not the least on account of the work’s strength which is difficult to properly appreciate in a recording, but fascinates with ease in concert.

Where is Anton Webern in his Schubert song orchestrations? In the unfailing tastefulness, the clarity, the absence of anything not essential. It’s as if Webern, by orchestrating them, further parsed the songs’ accompaniment down. The result levitates above the singer like a mobile suspended from silver threads the thickness of hair. The brief, dotted touches of color are already pure Webern, even though these are youthful works compared to his more famous orchestral transcriptions. Every note becomes audible, it’s Schubert as nouvelle cuisine. Prégardien was awfully straight in “Du bist die Ruh”, which ended up rather more pale than wan or sallow. No matter, this was still the absolute high point in a concert that was nicely, inconclusively rounded off with Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, formerly known as the Eighth, now referred to as the Seventh.