#ClassicalDiscoveries: The Podcast. Episode 016 - With Werner Erhardt: The Man Who Discovered Salieri

Welcome to #ClassicalDiscoveries. Here is a little introduction to who we are and what we would like to achive at the first (or rather "double-zeroëth" episode). Your comments, criticism, and suggestions remain most welcome, of whatever nature they may be. Now here’s Episode 016, where we are talking with our special guest, the fonder and long-time leader of Concerto Kön and L'Arte del Mondo. His discography is amazingly long, both as a conductor and as the ensemble leader of Concerto Kön, on all kinds of labels, well beyond Capriccio. (Teldec, DHM, Harmonia Mundi, DG, Berlin Classics, Erato, Sony...) I hope we will publish a second cut from this conversation, which easily lasted two hours, where we talk about some of my favorite recordings of all time that he had been part of.

Werner Erhardt on Record

Concerto Köln Capriccio Collection (10 CDs) Werner Erhardt Capriccio, 2019 US | UK | DE

Concerto Köln Berlin Classics Collection (12 CDs) Werner Erhardt Berlin Classics, 2019 US | UK | DE

Concerto Köln Teldec/Warner Collection (6 CDs) Warner (2008) US | UK | DE

Concerto Köln Saraband Dream of the Orient Archiv (2000) US | UK | DE

Remembering Sir Roger Norrington: An Appreciation

This Friday, July 18th, Sir Roger Norrington, a pioneer, a crackling wit in the classical music scene, a researcher, a gentleman-rebel, and a wonderful musician, has passed away at the ripe age of 91. Few people are afforded to touch as many lives as positively; to strike as many chords, to resonate so considerably with so many people as did Norrington – and all of that, senza vibrato!

Norrington (OBE, CBE, Knight), born on 16 March 1934 in Oxford, to a very Oxfordian family, was a towering figure in the English and international Historically Informed Performance scene. In 1962 he founded the Schütz Choir, with which he made his first Proms appearance in 1966. In this, coming from the choral tradition (his father was in the Oxford Bach Choir, of which Norrington became the President), he followed a trajectory that was typical for HIP conductors. But (although there was a good amount of, obviously, Schütz and Monteverdi – but also Berlioz, already) he was also one of the first conductors in said scene to focus very soon on the classical and romantic periods. He did so, primarily with the London Classical Players which he founded in 1978. Before (and for six more years after) that, he spent formative years with the Kent Opera, from 1969 to 1984. (The Kent Opera was eventually nixed by the Arts Council in 1989, because, hey, why not!)

The London Classical Players eventually became a major force in HIP performance and recording, a cornerstone of the British period-instrument movement, and stacked with the many period instrumentalists that were loitering about London at the time and who also filled the seats of many of the other early music bands that would follow suit. In 1986, EMI, on its (largely forgotten) early music imprint Reflexe, had him start on the Beethoven Symphonies, which upended ears around the classically interested globe, shocking, delighting and, in a few cases, horrifying Beethoven lovers everywhere. (“Norrington’s atrocious complete symphony cycle”, D.Hurwitz) How do they hold up, almost half a century later? Well, the playing is admittedly rough, which, with some charitability, you could call: exciting. The tempi are fast but no longer that fast, in comparison. (Then again, HvK was already pretty fast, for his time) The performances definitely have a pioneer-spirit about them and reek of gasoline. But I wouldn't say they're unattractive. In some ways, they are among the most audacious Beethoven performances of the time, and a good deal of that is still transmitted.

I don’t mind if a performance is unhistorical; I do mind if it isn’t fun.

L.v.Beethoven Symphonies London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1986-88) US | UK | DE

L.v.Beethoven Symphonies Stuttgart RSO Hässler (live, 2002) US | UK | DE

J.Haydn Symphonies 99-104 London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1992/93) US | UK | DE

H.Berlioz Symphonie fantastique London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1989) US | UK | DE

A.Bruckner Symphonies 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 Stuttgart RSO Hässler (2006) US | UK | DE

L.v.Beethoven Symphony No.9 Stuttgart RSO Hässler (2007?) US | UK | DE

Also early-on came some recordings of Haydn, which were probably my introduction to Norrington, back when I eagerly collected and listened to, whatever I could get my ears on, between the BMG Record Club and Tower Records. Hailed for their “erratic brilliance”, they still had to fight against longstanding favorites from stalwarts like Jochum and Davis, in the reviewers’ estimation. But Haydn may have been something like the godfather of Norrington’s musical adventures. The wit, humor, quirk, Puck united them, and it is not a coincidence that Norrington ended his performing career on November 18, 2021, leading the Royal Northern Sinfonia in an evening of a wildly diverse program of all-Haydn at Sage Gateshead.

While Norrington certainly researched each work and each composer painstakingly, before tackling the music, and while he held firm – even dogmatic – beliefs (especially about the absence of vibrato – here’s an op-ed of his in The Guardian: ”Bad vibrations” and one in the NYT, titled ”Time to Rid the Orchestras of the Shakes”), which opened him up to a few broadsides), his ultimate goal was always to have fun with the music; to make it entertaining. “The reason to do so is not because pure tone is ‘authentic’,” he concludes that op-ed, “but because it is beautiful, expressive and exciting.”

It is true, his ideas and his approach did not work equally well for all the music or on all the occasions he performed. Norrington, once dubbed “as stubborn and dogmatic and controversial a musician as one is likely to encounter these days” (Sudip Bose, in an article for The American Scholar, where he makes a beautiful case for Norrington), was accused of being a charlatan by some, and “just a man with a bizarre fixation ruining the music he conducts.” (This from a review in The Times from Stephen Pollard).

This kind of hyperbole always struck me as a curious mix of impotence and bluster. Things can not to be one’s liking, of course. One may, indeed, deem someone’s ideas about certain music poppycock. But clearly someone like Norrington was not out to wilfully desecrate music or ruin our enjoyment of it, whether his theories where right or wrong or the execution of it lacking. I’ve indulged in my share of hyperbole, even of that sort, but Norrington playing an Elgar Symphony or Pomp and Circumstance, is not akin to “burning torches at the gates of Buckingham Palace.” It’s just a bloody Elgar, or Beethoven, or Mahler, or (as it were) Bruckner Symphony played not to one’s liking. Switch the CD, go to another concert, you’ll hear it more to your liking. Vive la difference.

Incidentally, it was a Bruckner performance, that I first heard Roger Norrington in concert with. He was guest conducting the National Symphony Orchestra, not the most natural Bruckner Orchestra, and (reviewing it for ionarts) I approached it with some caution:

Sir Roger Norrington conducting is always an event, but when he takes on Bruckner, the Brucknerian must fear for the worst. The “worst” in this case being a playing style that conforms (or allegedly conforms) to the way these symphonies were performed during Bruckner’s time. Or, to be more precise: how this particular symphony would have been performed, had it been performed at all, since Norrington opted for the ‘original original’ version of Bruckner’s 4th – the 1874 Nowak edition that did not receive an outing in that form until 1975 with the Munich Philharmonic.

It was not a great success and I felt “rather conflicted” about it. Part of the problem with Norrington’s approach was, that it depended on the absolute will and ability of his orchestras to go along with this non-vibrato approach. Even with all the will in the world, not a given with any professional orchestra, a few rehearsals cannot suffice to master this approach in a way that the music will achieve the desired effect and lift-off.

Much of this was very interesting, like seeing a favorite building from a different angle for the first time. But it was also a building where the parts didn’t quite seem to fit together, as though they were glued together just a bit off, or puzzle pieces forced to fit when they don’t quite.

The London Classical Players, even if they could be a bit scrawny, in the 80s, had the will and drilling. So did the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the second major continental orchestra with which he held a position, next to the Camerata Salzburg (1997 to 2006). These willing Stuttgarters he led for 13 years and they became a vehicle for him to prove his point. He may never have fully convinced the majority of scholars – but his performance became increasingly convincing. For me, the musical triumph of this approach, came in unlikely recording success, fairly late in his Stuttgart tenure, when he put out interpretations of Bruckner’s Sixth and Mahler’s Ninth symphonies that knocked my socks off, when I heard them. (ClassicsToday’s David Hurwitz*, never a fan and vocal in trying to debunk Norrington’s vibrato-theories, called his “Stupid Mahler Ninth”.)

Norrington gives the great diffuser and comfort-smudger that permanent vibrato admittedly is, the boot, and has his modern instrument violinists, violists, cellists, and double basses hit the notes and play them clean without—literally—the wiggle room that vibrato provides, intonation-wise. Since his orchestra knows how to do that now, the sound isn’t off; instead, it’s more direct, seeming a little more strident at first, a little sharper, but certainly also more detailed and clearer… Loving this performance [doesn’t mean] being sold on his theory to the exclusion of the various other current ways of performing Mahler, but I, well… I love it. There is a zany bite and yet a plain simplicity to the music that is very refreshing, gripping, and exciting…

His Bruckner Sixth is, if anything, even better (see the ionarts “Best Recordings of 2010 – ‘Almost List’”). The Stuttgarters’ sharp attacks, crisp tempi, and lean textures work much better in Bruckner’s Sixth than you’d ever guess. It’s a perfect spoil to Celibdiache’s Sixth with the Munich Philharmonic or Haitink’s stupendous Dresden performance. Norrington and the orchestra make the music sound feisty where it should, and gleam along where it may. Both recordings make Norrington’s point not by dint of ideology but his true mantra for which the HIP elements were merely the means: Music needs to sound good. Concertgoers, listeners, even those he may have infuriated on occasion, will certainly cherish his memory, his life, his enormous contribution to music, and his wonderful, smiling legacy.

* In defense of Dave: When he liked something by Norrington, even in unlikely repertoire, he would say so, although not usually without some barbs to make his general point.
P.S. A tribute from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenement.


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Critic’s Notebook: Debbie Does Vienna - A Belated Handel-Premiere* in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Deborah“ im Konzerthaus: Händels Chöre reißen mit

G.F.Handel, Deborah Y.Kenny, S.Gritton, J.Bowman etc. The King's Consort / R.King Hyperion

Handel’s Deborah gets its long-overdue Vienna premiere at the Konzerthaus

There are still first times — even for a composer as well-known and well-loved as Georg Friedrich Handel. His oratorio Deborah finally had its modern* Vienna premiere on Sunday night at the Konzerthaus — just shy of 300 years after its debut in London. (*A little further research showed that t had actually been performed at the Musikverein in 1916!)

A rarely performed and seldom recorded work, Deborah has had a knotty reception history from the start: Handel’s second English-language oratorio was a flop at its premiere, and the libretto — not without some justification — was mocked as sub-par. Later, the piece was dismissed as a pasticcio, given that Handel, unusually even for him, recycled a remarkable number of earlier pieces: only about 32 percent of the score is newly composed. As a result, Deborah has always sat awkwardly between Esther (his oratorio breakthrough) and his early oratorio blockbuster Saul.

And yet it has its undeniable charms: a grand-scale cast and loads of glorious choruses. These delights were put to vivid use in the Grosser Saal by the Amsterdam Baroque Choir & Orchestra under their director, Ton Koopman.

In the title role, soprano Sophie Junker impressed with a bright, velvety, powerful — if surprisingly vibrato-heavy — voice, which came into especially moving focus in the aria “In Jehovah’s awful sight.” Opposite her, Jakub Józef Orliński, a rising star among countertenors, sang the role of Barak. He started off solidly and only got better from there: his focused, clear, and piercing tone — mesmerizing especially at full volume (and it gets very loud) — had undeniable charm. Think Andreas Schager, but for the Baroque and with better intonation.

That said, not everything sparkled. Koopman’s own organ playing was occasionally smudgy, the violins had their patchy moments, and the chorister doubling as the high priest of Baal was, frankly, out of his depth. Still, another chorister, Kieran White, made a convincingly vivid herald, and Amelia Berridge was delightful as Jaël, especially when merrily recounting how she nailed Sisera’s head to the ground with a wooden tent stake.

Granted, the ABO doesn’t currently play at the level of the Ensemble Pygmalion — but when the 26-head strong choir let rip with “O Baal, monarch of the skies!” you could see feet tapping along in the audience rows. Rightly so. Especially given that they performed a whole lot better than any such local ensemble could reasonably have been expected to do, the singular boo that rained down was rather inexplicable.


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Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Te Deum & Mozart Matinee

Te Deum — La Capella Reial • Le Concert des Nations • Savall

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Strahlende Trauermusik mit Jordi Savall und Adám Fischer

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

Evening and Mourning: De Profundis for Wolfgang Rihm

No one knew Friday evening, when Jordi Savall performed Michel-Richard Delalande’s (and Arvo Pärt’s) De Profundis. And When Adám Fischer conducted Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music at the Saturday Mozart Matinee, news had just reached Salzburg that Wolfgang Rihm had died that night. In retrospect, those two concerts took on the character of a musical leave-taking from arguably the most respected living German composer and a dear human being.

Charpentier Te Deum Ensemble Les Surprises Alpha, 2024

The sun was just laying last bands of warm yellows across the battlements, church towers, and roofs of Salzburg when the sounds of early French baroque filled the Collegiate Church, courtesy of Le Concert des Nations and Jordi Savall, who made his way to stage with a crutch and his face that looks like an apostle carved from wood. The center of this Tootsie Pop, between Delalande and the timeless minimalism of Pärt, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s grand Te Deum, which Europeans of a certain age invariably associate with childhood moments in front of the TV, maybe for the Four Hills ski jumping tournament or the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing that the opening prelude is the signal of the “Eurovision” pan-European broadcasts. Only that that version is rather more stately than the tempestuous trumpets and snappy timpani were, that Savall & Co. hurled at the enthused audience – eliciting early Bravos after the “In te, Domine, speravi” faded away into the generous acoustic of the ideally suited (and carefully prepared) church space.

Throughout the evening, the young La Capella Reial de Catalunya choir radiated with musical joy, like a big family in a choral outing. The soloists from its own ranks pleased with fresh and clear interpretations – above all the positively glowing (it may partly have been the advanced state of pregnancy) soprano of Elionor Martínez. Mezzo Kristin Mulders added her incisive, blazing instrument into the mix, although the tight, pronounced vibrato did not quite gel with the other, purer voices.

The short encore, Pärt’s Da pacem Domine (written for Savall and inspired by the 2004 Madrid train bombings), opened like a Gregorian chorale before the typical Pärt-isms chimed in: The chords that drift apart, the shifting long vocal lines, the regular time signature of the timpani, all resting on a subtle, almost unnoticeable bed of gently buzzing strings.

Funereal and Rocking Mozart from A.Fischer

W.A.Mozart 45 Symphonies Danish National CO Dacapo, 2013

Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, which Adám Fischer and the Mozarteum Orchestra performed, is not his best work – but it’s one of the more distinct ones in his output. The earthy, dark, woodwind-centered piece made for a most memorable curtain raiser, followed by a far less memorable D-minor Piano Concerto (K.466) in which the young Lukas Sternath, who won just about every prize at the 2022 ARD Music Competition, played flawless and lovely enough (“achingly sincere” is Tim Page’s suggestion for a put-down on such an occasion), but never achieved lift-off.

As if to prove that neither orchestra nor the conductor were to blame, Fischer and the Salzburgers went for a zany “Linz” Symphony that sparkled and crackled from start to end. With a smile across its collective face, the Mozarteum Orchestra delivered drive instead of legato, short but never choppy phrasing, and their joy transferred unto the audience’s – reminding us, why it is Adám Fischer, who currently has the best Mozart Symphony Cycle to his name.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Te Deum – La Capella Reial · Le Concert des Nations · Savall 2024: Jordi Savall (Dirigent), Le Concert des Nations, Solisten

Picture No.2: Mozart-Matinee · A. Fischer 2024: Adam Fischer (Dirigent), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg

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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