Musica Viva Munich: Ives, the American Mahler?

The role of Munich’s Musica Viva was once to serve as a forum for contemporary music. Founded after the war by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, who thereby managed to squeeze his own (stupendous) music into concerts (for which it normally would have been far too conservative), it was incorporated into Bavarian Radio which gave it the resources and ensembles to become one of the handful of most important series for contemporary music in Europe… music that, for better or worse, was subsidized to be written and then needed subsidies to be listened to. There’s nothing inherently wrong with supporting the arts, of course, although private initiatives and church institutions probably have a better track record in fostering creative masterpieces than politics and bureaucracy.

But there are problems with this ghettoisation of contemporary music: a lot of the really good stuff would and rather should belong in the mainstream programs of ‘regular’ concerts, because it needs and deserves the exposure. Of course that would take considerable effort in priming the more reluctant ears, and is easier to nod to one’s duty to that music (whether that sense of duty stems from noble aspiration or courtesy of taking public money) by airing it in the contemporary-niche. On the other hand, one would presumably want to make any concert series somewhat popular (an unpopular word around most Musica Viva types, “popular”). And so Musica Viva—seemingly more than ever under its new leader Dr. Winrich Hopp—attempts the balancing act between being true to the ‘NOW’ in classical music, and recycling modern classics.

It’s an ambitious act and it leaves me feeling rather ambivalent. I’m very much for popularity, actually. And I certainly think that any serious such series does a greater service to music for every fourth and fifth performance of a work than most world premieres. The ingredients of the Musica Viva concert I attended on February 17^th were exactly what drew me out: Charles Ives, Harrison Birtwistle, Enno Poppe—in that order. But what, please, is contemporary about Charles Ives? My grandmother wasn’t born when he stopped composing.

With Ives’ Robert Browning Overture (1908) and Harrison Britwistle’s Gawain’s Journey (1991) taking Enno Poppe’s 2010 Welt by the hands, the program might rather have been a very innovative regular BRSO night. But any Charles Ives in concert is good to hear, whether introduced to listeners amid classics or his musical corpse re-animated by the avant-garde who wish to make him the proto-modernist. There are few composers that I’ve found harder to enjoy on recordings; yet in concert—from the charming Unanswered Question to the ferocity of the Concord Sonata—it is bliss or excitement: in any case wide open ears, every time! Same with the Robert Browning Overture (not premiered until 1956, by Stokowski), with its gentle drones, pious dissonances, and solemn, muffled fanfares that rear their head elsewhere in Ives, too.

After the initial quiet, there is a gathering of voices, like simultaneous orchestral rehearsals of circus bands. It’s as if the bars of a long Scherzo had been shoved together in a fifth the space, to save paper and time. From beneath the abruptly ending thunder of the relentless timpanist’s fine work rise subtly shimmering elegiac strings with their radical innocence. Then the storm of voices, a well-humored noise very similar to the preceding one, rises again, before it simmers down and stops with just one final gentle chord.

It is interesting to read what Ives said about the work himself:

[The overture] is a kind of transition piece, keeping perhaps too much (it seems to me) to the academic, classroom habits of inversion, augmentation, etc. etc., in the development of the first theme and related themes. But the themes themselves, except the second main theme, were trying to catch the Browning surge into the baffling unknowables, not afraid of unknown fields, not sticking to nice main roads, and so not exactly bound up to one key or keys (or any tonality for that matter) all the time. But it seemed (I remember when finishing it) somewhat too carefully made, technically--but looking at it now, most twenty years after, it seems natural and worth copying out.

This illuminates the problem of much contemporary music—the deliberate, predetermined, calculated structure—and shows, ironically, what Ives isn’t. It isn’t too carefully made, and it certainly doesn’t sound that way. When the condensed musical passages arrive, it isn’t a calculating cluster, a shrewd stack of notes meant to be transparent and perfectly clever. It’s just that: a lot of noise and something of a sound that emanates from it. Trying to ‘listen through’, as Boulez-trained ears might be tempted to try, will not yield success nor enjoyment. It’s not nouvelle cuisine of single ingredients, it’s a stout curry where many flavors become one new flavor, and indeed Ives’ music appeals to the nose much more than it does to one’s self conscious intellectual faculties. (Not to be mistaken for music “that stinks to the ears.”)

In the ways of collage and strange parallels of different musics [sic], Ives is the American Gustav Mahler. But Ives’ music has an honest-healthy quality about it—a dash of sophisticated naïveté, even—that distinguishes it as much from Mahler’s wrung question marks as there are commonalities that connect the two.

C.Ives, Sy.No.2, Robert Browning Ovt., K.Schermerhorn / Nashville SO Naxos H.Birtwistle, Gawain's Journey, The Triumph of Time, Ritual Fragment, E.Howarth / Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta NMC

Harrison Birtwistle, freely wielding dissonances, has something of a ‘bad boy’ reputation, and his music that of being controversial. Which might make remote sense if you think of him as following in the footsteps of Benjamin Britten (though hardly those of Michael Tippet), but it doesn’t add up listening to the orchestral suite “Gawain’s Journey”. The symphonic extraction from his opera Gawain is a lush and literal score, much like an newer version of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Too lush and literal for the selectively-curious Musica Viva audience: when Gawain’s horse trots through the score in the coconut shell-like clip-clop of the temple blocks you can almost touch the sense of quiet indignation. The applause afterwards, despite a splendid performance from the backbenchers of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (anyone who can seems to skip contemporary music duty) and Stefan Asbury, was distinctly cool. A shame, because the beguiling, flavorfully dissonant orchestral music goes down very easy: full of dramatic and descriptive color through with the underlying opera shimmers through at all times, the whole thing wouldn’t even have been that much out of place in the Lord of the Rings score. (Alas, Howard Shore was busy cobbling it together from bits by Strauss and Pfitzner, not Birtwistle.)

Those two works made for a thoroughly enjoyable Musica Viva program. But what of the one piece presumably most typical of the series? Among the young-ish, serious generation of “Neue Musik” composers, Enno Poppe is someone who strikes me as quite willing to crack a musical smile. That’s notable for a winner of the financially desirable but artistically rather negligible Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, which rarely picks composers whose music might be accused of concord or humor. And Poppe’s intermittently interesting, amiably forgettable Keilschrift (Musica Viva Festival 2008) had left a better impression after the fact than in the moment.

The piece at hand: Welt (“World”). Poppe loves those single noun titles, working his way up from “Bones” via “Wood” to “Forest” to “Gold” and now “World”. If this works like the dedications of Bruckner’s Symphonies—6^th: Landlord, 7^th: King, 8^th: Emperor, 9^th: God—he’ll run out of titles, soon. Unfortuately Welt for string orchestra—deliberately eschewing famous historically examples—isn’t terribly good. Like a big metallic musical saw, the work drones on; the only animation supplied by imaginary scurrying mice and chasing cats. (More in my head than the music.) The parameters of how Poppe puts his microtonal chords together change, but the idea and general sound does not. And so the piece continues for at least twenty-five uneventful minutes, and it felt longer, still. It’s easily listenable, never unpleasant, possibly even amusing if it isn’t taken very seriously. It’s also perfectly boring, without emotional investment or any hint of lasting impression. “Neue Muzak”, if you will. No worries—not every work can be a winner. Even the very best composers have their lesser moments. It’s just that if that had been Brahms, he would have burnt the score.

A copy-right infringing taster of the Robert Browning Overture can be found on YouTube (Naxos), if you don’t have Spotify or a subscription to the Naxos Music Library.

Picture of Stefan Asbury (l) and Enno Poppe (r) courtesy Bavarian Radio, © Astrid Ackermann

Best Recordings of 2010 (# 6)

This continues the “Best Recordings of 2010” countdown. No.10 can be found here, No. 9 here, No. 8 here, No. 7 here. The lists from the previous years: 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 6 - New Release

Elliot Carter & Udo Zimmermann, Cello Concertos, Jan Vogler, Kristjan Järvi, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, NEOS SACD

E.Carter, U.Zimmermann, Cello Concertos, Vogler / Järvi / BRSO NEOS SACD

A disc with just 39 minutes of playing time? Yes. And not only do I think that’s not a problem, I like it. There is no reason that in 2010 any published sound recording should be measured by how close it gets to the (now) arbitrary 80-minute mark that the CD has standardized. That limit has just about become meaningless. SACDs can only fit about 70-some minutes on a disc. But SACDs with regular definition content can fit up to ten hours. If audio-only BluRay discs become common, the limit is even higher (will we complain then, if the music on one disc doesn’t max out the storage capacity?), but more likely the very idea of “capacity” is going to go, as we are moving toward streaming, downloading, and media servers. The blurb on press flyer justifying the short playing time doesn’t even go into that, but is just as right: "We deemed it appropriate not to dilute the impact of these two works by adding any filler, just to get to a greater play time for this SACD." Bravo!

I’ve written about the concert from where this CD was recorded here. Elliot Carter’s Cello Concerto with its searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even at his most modern, that human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack. By the way: Happy Birthday Elliot!

Still more intriguing on this disc is Udo Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance here, under Kristjan Järvi and with Vogler. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his at his ‘own’ event—though the first in over a decade—wasn’t terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, is surprising though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann’s “Ich hab im Traum geweinet” (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter’s concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann’s music. Purpose, truth’s little cousin, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer. Zimmermann hides behind Schumann for the beauty; typical of the reflexive cowardice of modern(ist) European composers when it comes to musical consonance. “Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” his notes at the concert disingenuously questioned and eagerly postulated. But better beauty and purpose under a pretense than not at all, and that’s what we get: The concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality.

# 6 – Reissue

Johann Wilhlem Wilms, Symphonies 6 & 7, Concerto Köln, Brilliant Classics 93778

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Ionarts at Large: American Night at Munich’s Musica Viva

American contemporary music is supposed to be difficult to program in Europe. It’s still too modern for the traditional concert clientele, but too bourgeois for the avant-garde-happy audience reared on—and expecting—the heavyly intellectual fare of Boulez, Stockhausen, or Ferneyhough. The listenable, downright popular (shudder!) American contemporary music of Glass, Reich, Adams, Del Tredici, Argento, Corigliano et al. is too “middle brow” an attendee sympathetic to these composers suggested, “and European culture just doesn’t do ‘middle brow’. Only extremes.”

But perhaps times are changing and the ears are regaining primacy over the mind when it comes to music, because the Herkulessaal in Munich was not only very well filled, but the response was also wholly positive after what amounted to “Easy Listening Night” at the 7^th Musica Viva concert in 2009. Steve Reich’s Three Movements for Orchestra (1986), the oldest work on the program, was the curtain raiser. Full of the pleasing predictability of Reich’s propulsive beat it was just the work to warm up the ears for Elliott Carter’s 2001 Cello Concerto. The searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even when at his most modern, a human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack.

The dashing, ever-suave Kristjan Järvi led the Bavarian State Orchestra through all works with panache, his looks, self-consciously sexy stance, and debonair movements conveying the air of a young, classical Jon Bon Jovi on the rostrum. John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007) was more notable for the incredibly well played solo trumpet part and the finale’s bracing build-up than for the music itself. While it’s easy to get a bad suite out of a great opera (Rosenkavalier!), it’s rather difficult to get a good suite out of a modest opera. A competent botch job that benefits from the omission of vocal parts, the Doctor Atomic Symphony nearly manages that feat, though.

The surprise of the evening was Udo Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his—the first in over a decade—wasn’t terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, was, though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann’s “Ich hab im Traum geweinet” (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter’s concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann’s music. Purpose, the little cousin of Truth, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer.

Zimmermann seems to feel naughty for throwing this tonal bone to the listener. The liner notes spend considerable time justifying the daring occurrence of harmony. As a truly modern European composer one would not want to be considered a reactionary, after all. Perhaps Zimmermann is right about being worried. (“Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” the notes disingenuously question and eagerly postulate. ) After all, this ‘taking the listener by the ear’, gently, and harmonically pulling him his way… this acknowledgment of purpose (in instrumentation and structure) is the very negation of Zimmermann’s (and the whole avant-garde music scene’s) underlying and often trumpeted notion of the “paradigm shift” that had allegedly occurred in our listening habits.

The concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. The heartfelt reception and genuine applause must have been quite different than the usual, cool admiration. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality. A warm “welcome back”.

Top 10 Live "At-Large" Performances of 2008

Ionarts has never reported so much from outside Washington, D.C., and especially I have spent a little more time than planned in Munich (and Salzburg). It's good to hear what orchestras, opera houses, and chamber musicians elsewhere are doing, if only to confirm that Washington can't compete, except on the chamber music front where what the Corcoran, National Gallery, and Library of Congress offer (largely free, no less) is truly world class. Here is our Top 10 list of performances from abroad, covering Salzburg, Naarden, Vienna, and Munich.

Semyon Bychkov, WDR Symphoy Orchestra, Vadim Repin (Philharmonie, Munich [Concerto Winderstein], January 21)

It started with Semyon Bychkov brought his West German Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Philharmonic Hall in Munich where Vadim Repin and the Beethoven Concerto were the bonus to a shrieking, thundering, icily quiet - in short: devastating - Shostakovich Fourth Symphony.

Sylvain Cambreling, SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden & Freiburg, SWR Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart (Herkulessaal [Musica Viva Festival], January 27)

Musica Viva - founded by Karl Amadeus Hartmann and organized by Bavarian Radio - is one of the most important contemporary music series in German, perhaps Europe. February of 2008 saw an entire festival in addition to the half dozen concerts sprinkled throughout the calendar, featuring two weeks packed with the new and newest in classical music, and a few classics like Stockhausen's "Gesang der Jünglinge" or Messiaen's "Un sourire", and a long overdue German premiere of Hartmann's symphony "L’Œuvre". Many of the new pieces were forgettable, even if they were interesting in the moment. Enno Poppe's "Keilschrift" and Younghi Pagh-Paan's "In luce ambulemus" for example, which preceded the one work that completely enthralled me in Cambreling's concert and indeed over the whole festival. Hans Zender's "Logos-Fragmente" (some parts of this work-in-progress were given their world premiere here) was that work and with three choirs trading lines, partly improvised, back and forth, and an orchestra interjecting violently here and softly there, I could not help thinking that Zender was easily the equal of his more famous German colleagues Riehm and Henze. Well, at least for the duration of the concert, I thought so. I doubt a recording can ever approximate the experience, but either Wergo or Hänssler Classics hopefully will try one day.


Christine Schäfer, Eric Schneider (Herkulessaal, Munich [Concerto Winderstein], February 19)

Another highlight came early: Christine Schäfer sang Schubert's Winterreise at the Herkulessaal. I began listening with some trepidation -- but by the time Der Wegweiser came around, I witnessed some of the most miraculous singing ever.


Jos van Veldhoven, Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Grote Kerk, Naarden, March 14)

The first concert of my "Easter Pilgrimage" was the best: What Jos van Veldhoven and his Netherlands Bach Society conjured in their performance of the St. Matthew Passion in the "Large Church" on the fortress-town of Naarden was magnificient in every way. The singers, down to the nervous two (!) choristers that sang the opening parts usually taken by mid-sized to large treble choirs, were marvelous and sounded fuller than can be imagined, given van Veldhoven's adherence to the "One Voice per Part" ideology that's the current fad in 'authentic' Bach performance. Well, this was no fad, and if Bach ever got his music to sound like this, there was surely, admittedly no need to use more voices.


Christian Thielemann, Vienna State Opera (National Theater, Vienna, March 20)

The second-to-last performance of that pilgrimage was another stunning feat. Not so much the Vienna State Orchestra, which flubbed here and there and engaged in its tendency to blare (a habit it will now be rid of by Welser-Möst). Not even so much the singers, although Stephen Milling (Gurnemanz), Thomas Moser (Parsifal), Mihoko Fujimura (Kundry) and Falk Struckmann (Amfortas) were all good -- and Fujimura (unlike in Bayreuth this summer) excellent, given her ability to combine singing and acting into one cohesive whole. Nor because the first act of Christine Mielitz' was busy, interesting, curious and the second - Kundry the drugged sex-slave of Klingsor - ingenious. (The third one, sadly, ran completely out of ideas and offered nothing.)

No, it was because of Christian Thielemann's conducting that was sheer brilliance. The utmost (but 'covert', undetectable) flexibility of tempos made Parsifal a four-hour continuity of keeping the ears interested, the singers supported, the hearts titillated. Incredible how easy it was to tell how much superior this performance was on account of its conducting -- and how difficult to put in words why. But everyone present knew. After the last chord, I was ready to hear it one more time. And that's why the Vienna public (and the musicians) swear by Thielemann when it comes to Wagner or Strauss.


Herbert Blomstedt, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Herkulessaal, Munich, June 13)

I've heard four Bruckner Symphonies this year with all three (big) Munich Orchestras. The Bruckner Eighth with Kent Nagano (1887 Nowak "Original Version") was largely a dud, and what I heard of Mariss Jansons' Fourth was, the last movement excepted, not better. That leaves the Munich Philharmonic's Fourth under Thielemann and Herbert Blomstedt with the BRSO first at the Herkulessaal and then at the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren. It's a difficult choice, but not the least because I prefer the Eighth Symphony over the Fourth (by far) I have to chose Blomstedt's subversively excellent performance at the Herkulessaal. It wasn't 'special' in any particular way, and for two movements it wasn't even very notable. But it was exceedingly well played - and by the third and especially the fourth movement, sheer quality not only won the day, it swept the listener away. Subtle, but making a lasting impression. Unfortunately the interpretation remained largely unchanged in the gorgeous Ottobeuren Abbey (Bernstein memorably conducted the BRSO there, too), while the acoustic differed wildly - with results less than what they could have been in what is one of the most overwhelming settings for a work like Bruckner's Eighth - itself likened to a "cathedral of sound". If I should be in Munich later this year, I'll be sure to catch his Bruckner-return this season: on May 7th and 8th, he will conduct the 9th alongside Mozart's 34th Symphony with the BRSO.


Thielemann, Munich Philharmonic (Philharmonie, Munich, July 17)

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra may be the best band in town (so says Gramophone Magazine, and I tend to agree), but the most interesting concerts - just about guaranteed to be special even to a hardened concert-goer - are those where the Munich Philharmonic plays under its music director Christian Thielemann. The 850^th anniversary celebration for Munich included a free concert of the ‘city’s own’ orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It played before a crowd that got their tickets through a raffle – none were available for purchase. Unfortunately the relationship between cost and value was demonstrated by the absence of about a third of the would-be attendees. A shame for those who stayed at home, because the performance was as splendid as it was long, and then some. Tightly controlled force was exerted and special care lavished on transitions. Everything was homogeneous, nothing jerky or anything other than organic. Thielemann worked the compelling necessity, that inner inevitability, out of the music.


Quatuor Ébène (Large Concert Hall Mozarteum, Salzburg, August 18)

After a tense first half, the four fantastic musicians of the Quatuor Ébène were letting their hair down in their debut recital at the Salzburg Festival. Bartók and Ravel were expectedly the ticket to excellence, but the highlight was Webern’s Langsamer Satz - Tristan & Isolde condensed into 9 minutes.


Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic (Large Festival Hall, Salzburg, August 31)

There were gems among the orchestral concerts I heard in Salzburg, too, and perhaps more impressive than the already impressive Cleveland Orchestra was the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle. Partly, because of my low expectations after listening to some of their emotionally flat EMI recordings, presenting run-of-the-mill orchestral sound (their recent Mahler 9th is exempted from that), and they surpassed it with frightful ease. Partly because the program of Wagner's Prelude & Liebestod and Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony had greater potential to be gripping than even the most translucent Bartók... and so it turned out to be.


Kent Nagano, Bavarian State Opera (Bavarian National Theater, Munich, November 10)

Finally, if you are spending time in the town with one of the three great opera houses in the world (self-proclaimed, often alleged, and difficult to argue against, as it turns out), there ought to have been an opera performance deserving mention in this list. Indeed, there were a few, but above all the new production of Wozzeck which brings together excellence in the singing, acting, staging, orchestral playing, and conducting. What an intelligent, engrossing night out, despite the fact that the challenges Berg's music places on most listeners remain as true today as they must have then.


Post Scriptum: Mariss Jansons, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Philharmonie, Munich, December 19)

This just in: The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony was the epitome of excellence (and even excitement, this time) and it absolutely needs to be included in this list. I already didn’t include Sir John Elliot Gardiner’s November concert with the BRSO, where he had made them to sound warm and radiant like I have never heard before (they managed to sound like the Munich Philharmonic at its best which, in this case, is a compliment) in Shostakovich (op.110a) and Bartók (Third Piano Concerto – with an inspired Piotr Anderszweski as the soloist) – alas, Dvořák’s Seventh after intermission was not particularly special. Now this concert “was one of those nights that remind us why we still go to concerts and why our expectations are rightly so high when we do.” Pending Thielemann’s New Years’ performances of Beethoven’s Ninth, this was the crowning orchestral glory of the calendar year.