Ionarts-at-Large: Gergiev's First Time

Gergiev’s first concert after officially being announced and presented as the incoming Principal Conductor of the Munich Philharmonic (see Valery Gergiev Signs Contract With Munich Philharmonic) couldn’t have been more symbolic.

Anton Bruckner—the orchestra’s musical house-god—coupled with contemporary Russian fare: Sofia Gubaidulina’s substantial, entrancingly wheezing bayan concerto. This combination of Russian music of the last 100 years and German romanticism, Gergiev’s foremost strength and his most easily argued weakness contains at once the promise and skepticism of his appointment in the orchestra-loving Bavarian capital.

There are plenty of other reasons why this ‘safe appointment’ may not be as clever or promising for the orchestra than it looks at first glance, but Gergiev’s performance of the Seventh Symphony wasn’t one of them: This was well executed Bruckner, neither celebrated—true—and certainly not butchered.

The word among colleagues who went to hear the same program the night before was purportedly one of disgruntled displeasure. Garish, superficial, loud… which sounded believable enough, given my experiences with Gergiev and Mahler in a 2011 concert (LSO, Leipzig, “a waste of time and energy”, review here), though I have also heard splendid Mahler (coupled with Strauss and Shchedrin) with stubbled maestro.

Sight-unseen, sound-unheard, a critic a little further north suggested helpfully that in this music—Bruckner—the orchestra could fly on autopilot well enough anyway. That’s good to know, in case the concert turned out well, after all and against all gleeful predictions. (Karl Popper might have called that “falsification-proofing” one’s arguments, though, and wagged a finger in admonishment.)

Certainly Bruckner is a composer Gergiev will yet grow further into, and have to, if he’s to make dear friends with Munich Bruckner-lovers. Given the benefit of the doubt, and considering his ability to master steep learning curves (as proven in Wagner), there is plenty of reason to be confident that well before 2020, the end of his initial contract, he’ll deliver a Bruckner Seventh where the intermediate climaxes don’t tread on the larger structure, where the clerical ammunition hasn’t been all spent after the first movement, where the sections of the orchestra enter with greater precision. But already present were touches of fine color and some very lovely pianissimo playing—and if “superficial” and “loud” might still have accurately described aspects of this performance, at least “garishness” was nowhere to be heard.

S.Gubaidulina, Fachwerk, Silenzio, G.Draugsvoll / Ø.Gimse / Trondheim SO Naxos A.Bruckner, Symphony No.7, B.Haitink / CSO CSO Resound

More interesting than the Brucknerian nod to subscription audiences, was in any case Gubaidulina’s concert Fachwerk, performed by its dedicatee, Norwegian accordion player Geir Draugsvoll. (Last reviewed here when he gave a recital—including Gubaidulina—at the National Gallery of Art.)

Gergiev, who had given the UK premiere of the concerto with the LSO and performed it with his Mariinsky Orchestra at the White Nights Festival, must have worked hard on the piece, given how confidently the Munich Philharmonic strings and percussion—slightly out of their comfort zone in such repertoire—performed it. If using the bayan in her works constitutes an element of nostalgia for Mme. Gubaidulina, it’s not detectable explicitly in Fachwerk. Instead, what we hear are two breathing organisms—one the soloist and one the orchestra around him or her—who groan and rasp in atmospheric, shuddering ways, always just below the the average, contemporary-music-suspicious, audience member’s threshold of dissonance pain. To that effect Gubaidulina also throws a good deal of gently lyrical phrases in, to soften Fachwerk’s seductive blow.

It’s not an easy concerto to absorb or comprehend on first listening (that’s where Draugsvoll’s Naxos release of the work very helpfully and enjoyably comes in!), but it kept the audience successfully quiet, very quiet, for at least 20 minutes: No small feat on a wet, cold February day. After being on some of its best behavior I have heard from that crowd, a hint of coughing-punctuated restlessness stole back in, as Gubaidulina teases the listener with long cadenzas, deceptive recapitulations and re-starts… structuring the work like a series of increasingly smaller blocks the end of which cannot be predicted until just before it comes. A progression of thematic chords, a faint air of melted Bach and Berg’s Violin Concerto bring it to its well deserved close and brought all its performers and its composer (present) their well deserved applause.

Usefully, for countries where the accordion or bayan isn’t integral part of the culture but more the opening of a music-joke, Draugsvoll added a short encore that underscored the inherent possibilities and beauty of the instrument… Even if performing Piazzolla (Chiquilin de Bachin, uncommonly neat and nuanced) also means sailing close to accordion clichés.

Ionarts-at-Large: Bavarian State Orchestra in Gubaidulina and Strauss

Picture courtesy Bavarian State Opera, © Wilfried Hösl

With memories of the Salzburg Lulu still fresh—where Marc Albrecht’s conducting had been chiefly responsible for a great night of Berg—I was pleasantly surprised to find his name on the program for the first Academy Concert of the Bavarian State Orchestra’s orchestral season. (“Surprised” not because he was a late addition but because I tend to forget these kind of details before being reminded again when I arrive at the performance.)

On the program: first Sofial Gubaidulina’s Violin Concerto “Offertorium” and then Strauss’ Heldenleben. Soloist for the concerto was youngish Latvian Baiba Skride, one of the Nippon-babes, which means she gets to play the 1725 Stradivari "Wilhelmj". After the fragmented orchestral introduction on the theme of Bach’s Musical Offering, Gubaidulina has the strings slide about with the soloist in this score saturated with shimmering silver, earthy portamentos, and rubbery, wooshing brass utterances and always those woven-in references to Bach-via-Webern (Ricercata). With her piercing-elegant tone, flittering lightness, and rubato-tremolo mix veering from one to the other and back at any moment, the concerto was suitably becoming to Baiba Skride. If the cadenza of the first movement sounded more like a technical exercise than liberated musicality, the conjunction of cacophony and stilted violinism of the second movement was negotiated with aplomb. The highlight of the work is clearly the last movement, when calm, tension, and release—very nicely captured by soloist and orchestra—follow the explosive exclamation mark of a decibel-happy gong roll that marks the end of the second movement.

As unfamiliar as Gubaidulina is in Munich*—it met with uncurious indifference tinged by technical admiration for Skride—as familiar is Ein Heldenleben, being the daily bread of sorts for these Strauss-savvy Beervarians. They seemed sufficiently impressed after the performance, a feeling I could share only to the extent the very beginning and end where concerned. The strings started out enormously disciplined, for example, a fact possibly overlooked by the couple in front of me that could not contain its hearty laughter watching Marc Albrecht’s cartoonish contortions, looking rather like something Wilhelm Busch might have drawn: tall, lanky, and animated with more spirit than grace. Top-heavy, the orchestra’s upper voices assumed primary importance over the chugging rhythm beneath, which gave the Hero’s Life more Alpinesque qualities than it already has. (A side: if you like Richard Strauss’ Heldenleben—and especially if you can’t stand it—do listen to Emil von Reznicek’s Schlemil, Reznicek’s over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek masterpiece and the quintessential anti-Heldenleben.)

The performance, meanwhile, took a turn towards the pedestrian, especially when the first violinist couldn’t get the long solo parts to take off. Strauss sounding like a skillfully played Bartók étude is an interesting proposition, no doubt, but was not, I believe, intended on the part of either performer or composer on this occasion. The orchestral precision gone and little flavor left, one had to wait for redemption from the ruminating neither-nor until the late lyrical passages that stood out again for their feeling and carefully honed detail. The concertmaster, too, got in the spirit of things now—and the final chord was so meticulously crafted towards complete deliciousness that I felt as though I could hear an extra fifteen minutes of rehearsal just in those last few bars.

* This might change as Gubaidulina’s second violin concerto, “In tempus praesens”—with Gidon Kremer, is on the program of the Munich Phil later this year.

All Hail the Accordion

There is that slight pause followed by a snicker when you tell a friend that you are going to an accordion recital on a Sunday evening. And should you think that justifying that peculiar choice of entertainment by claiming a special relationship to this instrument – the first I ever played – elicits approval: think again. But there I was at the National Gallery of Art anyway, ready to be exposed to the artistry of “internationally recognized” accordionist (to the extend that accordionists are much recognized – I, for one, suspect that their privacy is fairly safe in most major airports) Geir Draugsvoll.

Lest you think that the classical accordionist’s performance life is all transcriptions or folk tunes note that there are original compositions for accordion from such luminary 20th-century and contemporary composers as Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Vagn Holmboe, Astor Piazzolla (naturally), Geir Tveitt, Per Nørgård, and Sofia Gubaidulina – with samplings of the last three on this list on offer that December 4th in the West Garden Court.

Being a member of one of the oldest instrument families, the accordion (the origins of which go back over 5,000 years) exists in many different forms and under various names. In Germany and Russia, an “Accordion” is a chromatic Piano-Accordion (the one with the keyboard on the right side) while the version with buttons is called Handharmonika or Bayan, respectively. A “Concertina” is (more or less) chromatic, too, octagonal, hexagonal, or rectangular with usually four rows of buttons and is the forefather to the Bandaneon that Argentina-bound émigré Heinrich Band developed. Diatonic accordions are usually used in folk music and produce a different pitch depending on whether the instruments’ bellows are pushed or pulled. Geir Draugsvoll’s instrument – to get back to the concert after this little excursion – was a chromatic accordion with six rows of buttons.

S.Gubaidulina, De Profundis, Silenzio, Et Exspecto, In Erwartung, G.Draugsvoll BIS

Sofia Gubaidulina’s De Profundis (1978) shudders itself slowly into gear on narrow and low tone-clusters that try to rise and rise – only to die down again. For a while it most resembled a car that won’t start on a cold winter morning in Bergen or Gubaidulina’s native Russia – until softly, slowly beautiful melodies are chiseled out of more transparent chords. Little shivers and whimpers made much of the accordionist’s ability to pull and draw his fingers smoothly in all directions on the keys. Complete cacophony is juxtaposed in this work with Bach-ian elements before the accordion takes a deep breath only to imitate a Cessna cruising nearby. But wherever the music came to a point of being just plain weird, it pulled another enchanting trick out of its deep musical bag. Sadly, not even the loudest and most violent passages could either drown out or wake the gentleman nearby who happily and audibly snored through it all.

Compared to Gubaidulina’s experimental work of impetuous youth, Geir Tveitt’s (1908-1981) Two Inventions for Accordion is a perfectly sane and straightforward work that has the particular element of delight to it that can be heard in so much of this fascinating composer’s output. Although the short work was interesting enough, it is the tragedy-haunted composer who merits your particular attention – for example by reading up on him in a book titled Surprised by Beauty.

Geir Draugsvoll’s own transcription of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) was (although not without occasional slips) simply breathtaking. Words would do the spectacle injustice – it alone would have been worth going to the NGA for. Norwegian folk dances arranged for accordion by Tor Christian Faugstad were a delight even for the non-Norwegian ears and had not only much musical value but were surprisingly somber. (Then again, perhaps not that surprisingly.)

Grieg’s Holberg Suite in Mr. Draugsvoll’s own transcription should have been more of a stretch than the fairly straight organ-to-accordion transcription with the earlier Bach. Instead it sounded almost more faithful to the original than the blazing Toccata. (And we’ve heard our fair share of the Holberg Suite in the original over the course of the last year: here, here, and here.)*

In…………… (good) and out. In…………… and out.” Lazily it lifts one eye lid, snarls a bit and breathes a bit more… until, as though stung, it suddenly jumps up. Thus begins the day of the animal that Per Nørgård (*1932) imagines the accordion to be in his 1967 work Anatomic Safari, which calls for sounds I never knew an accordion could make. From the sounds of it, the accordion is at least a distant relative of the rhinoceros, and the work is a fun-filled, fur-trimmed silly thing. Quoting excerpts from Draugsvoll’s program notes on it might be better yet to describe it:

Like most safaris, Per Nørgård’s Anatomic Safari is better understood and appreciated with a guide. […] Through nine small movements, the accordion is presented in the manner of a beast encountered on a safari. (Edvard Grieg once stated that the accordion sounds like “a pig with a sour throat.”) […]
Again, the [preceding] physical and rhythmic activity becomes too much for the poor instrument, and it descends into
7) Vertigo – Vertigo Double. One can almost imagine that the accordion has contracted malaria [during] the safari! As it recovers, the accordion is very eager to get back to more familiar paths, and this can easily be heard in
8) Toccata – Impatience, which rapidly takes the piece into the last movement:
9) Fantasy – Pietro’s Return, which is perhaps very close to where the accordion really belongs. And where is that? In twelve minutes, the composer provides the answer to that question.

It’s the ideal showpiece with which to end such a recital; a recital that all those who raised their eyebrows and mouth-sides should kick themselves for having missed. Hurled Bravos, and prolonged applause caused a happily received encore; and with that beautiful little waltz by Astor Piazzolla we were sent home in desirous delight.

* In fact, the work sounded so good that I am tempted to start a drive on Ionarts to commission a Bruckner symphony transcription and performance from Geir Draugsvoll. Either the 6th or the 7th – whichever the majority of contributors or the artist would prefer. Don’t think I am being cute. If I get enough of a response from our Ionarts readers, I’ll ask him if he’d do it (actually, I did and he’d consider it for either one but preferably two accordions!), how much we’d have to raise (so far he only stipulated a score of a transcription for one or two pianos – though I suspect it will take a little more than that), what sponsors could be willing to help out, and which record company might like to record it. (MDG, Winter & Winter). Looking forward to hearing from you!