Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 18 )

Shostakovich Cycle

One of the delightfully outlandish bits of programming at the 2011 Salzburg Festival was a cycle of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets in chronological order in four concerts over two days: Two shorter afternoon-sessions of three quartets at 4PM (1-3 on the 18^th, 9-11 on the 19^th), another five and four quartets respectively at 7.30 in the evening. I had operas to attend to in the evening, but was glad to take in even just six Shostakovich Quartets on the side—especially with the wonderful Mandelring Quartett.

DSCH, String Quartets Nos. 1, 2, 4, Mandelring Quartett Audite DSCH, String Quartets Nos. 3, 6, 8, Mandelring Quartett Audite DSCH, String Quartets Nos.5, 7, 9, Mandelring Quartett Audite DSCH, String Quartets Nos. 10, 12, 14, Mandelring Quartett Audite DSCH, String Quartets Nos. 11, 13, 15, Mandelring Quartett Audite DSCH, String Quartets Nos. 1-15, Mandelring Quartett Audite

Over the last few years the Mandelring Quartett has issued the complete cycle on SACD for Audite (reviews here and here) and recordings gave a pretty good idea of what awaited one at these concerts: “The sheer beauty of all of Shostakovich’s brilliantly harrowing ugliness that these discs offer […] is something to behold.” That’s pretty much it: The Mandelring Quartett offers more beauty and less gore in Shostakovich than one would expect if the only reference were the performances of the (all-Russian) “Borodin”, “Beethoven”, or “Shostakovich” Quartets. They accentuate surfaces more than spikes and corners; their rhythmic beat is propulsive but rarely maniacal. They are DSCH-seducers, not DSCH-enforcers… which is not to say that they can’t work up an awesome storm. The intensity of the afternoon sessions, was considerable to inclined ear. But one must first get out of ‘Borodin-mode’ to listen to the Mandelring Quartett and gain the maximum reward from their sessions with Dmitry.

In the 1938 Quartet No.1, the melodic opening lines sounded like parallel Christmas songs. As if any dissonance or chromatic stress was sheer coincidence; an innocent by-product of the performance. The first violin’s deep, varnished, occasionally dominating sound (Sebastian Schmidt) variously sang and twitched above the viola’s (Roland Glassl) beat. The finale bristled with energy even distributed among the four players. The flow and pull of the Second Quartet (1944) and its modulated sweetness swept the rug from underneath your feet and immediately pulled you into that strange, wild, but unthreatening dance that the first movement constitutes. At anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes, it’s a comparatively long work and the second movement stretches particularly.

In the course of it a little girl a row behind me, perhaps four, whispered a few curious questions into the ear of her dad, who in turn tried to tamper that curiosity to buy himself a twenty-minute delay and see those questions asked during intermission. But they obviously burned upon the girl’s little soul and immediate inquiry needed to be made. It was endearing, actually… as was the very fact that a wide-eyed and wide-eared four year old attended an afternoon of Shostakovich String Quartets in the first place. But the intermittent whisper did not fail to bring out the evil eye of indignity of a senior couple two rows in front, which sent buckets full of withering, scornful stares into the innocent’s direction. It’s not been that long since I’ve felt similar such ocular pronouncements of disapproval and it touched me distinctively the wrong way. With something less than my usual charm I leaned forward and pointed at the stage, suggesting firmly to the gentleman that the music played up front, and that his contortions would only get him crick in his neck. The advice wasn’t taken kindly, but it was taken summarily. My later apology fell flat, though, when I suggested that among extra-musical noises, the whispered question of a curious child was by far the loveliest anyone could wish for… in any case better than hearing-aids going off, dentures incessantly being sucked into prim position, or old ladies in search of tightly wrapped cough drops really getting to the bottom of their bags.

The Third Quartet has my favorite opening of the lot, a light violin line above the chugging cello and viola, buoyantly dancing along, untroubled by darker intrusions occasionally thrown in. It’s very hard not to bop my head along to it and shake all the limbs in rhythmic convulsion. But the action would undoubtedly, justifiably call forth even more recrimination than whispers, so I suppressed the urge… especially on the rickety seating in the Mozarteum where every tapped foot is transmitted half a dozen seats to both sides. Peckish, lyrical, intense, but also ruthless in the third movement Allegro non troppo, it was an astonishing way to finish the first afternoon set.

Everything about this opening shot of DSCH suggested that attendance for at least the next afternoon session was downright mandatory, and so I came back for another half measure of Shostakovich, Quartets 9 through 11, opp.117, 118, and 122. Despite being nominally sold out, the Grand Concert Hall wasn’t completely full. Perhaps the good weather had kept a number of ticket holders from attending the 4PM part, rolling in only for the more extensive evening bit, while as many of the afternooners were indisposed in the evening (or had their fill of Shostakovich), because similar lacunae were reported among the seats in those concerts, too, with only about half the audience remaining for the 8^th and 15^th quartets, respectively.

The Mandelring more or less picked up on Friday where I had left them, with great accuracy, excellent intonation (especially evident after hearing less-than-ideal examples), and their lyrical streak. The spiccato riding motif (not unlike the famous Rossini-William Tell Overture motif that Shostakovich uses in his 15^th Symphony) in the Allegretto of the 9^th Quartet, for example, was played with more delicacy than fierceness, but ever propelling. The concluding Allegro, twice as long as any one of the preceding four movements, was dashing-dynamic—and the leftover energy went right into the Andante of Quartet no.10. After few memorable moments in between, the Mandelring Quartet emerged again for a final movement, Allegretto, that veered nicely between thrilling and serene.

Symphonic dolefulness marks the opening of the 11^th Quartet, and the four musicians finally—dug into the seven-movement (but only about 16-minute long) quartet like berserkers which worked well with calm underlying pulse. With so much fun to be had for the ears, it was over before one noticed. Since the four players apparently appreciate the challenge of these Shostakovich marathons (this was the second time they had done the complete set in two days), there might be the opportunity to hear the missing nine quartets soon enough.

Picture courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Wolfgang Lienbacher

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 17 ) - Věc Makropulos Fantabulous

Leoš Janáček • Věc Makropulos

The Vienna Philharmonic doesn’t always get the glory and it doesn’t always deliver the best performances, but it really is the orchestral workhorse of the Salzburg Festival. And this year it certainly deserves all the praise it gets and then some for the work they are doing, in several shifts, in the pit. Phenomenal their malleability from conductor to conductor (Muti, Thielemann, Salonen, Nézet-Séguin), astonishing the average quality of the playing, delightful the various and very different nuances they bring to Verdi, Strauss, Janáček, and Mozart.

Věc Makropulous (The Makropulous Case) has terrific music with sweep and drama and sometimes ferocious energy, sometimes sardonic wit, and then chilling severity. It is based on a dark comedy by Karel Čapek about the ongoing, century-long court case of an inheritance dispute into which the famous diva Emilia Marty interjects herself—seemingly for reasons of fairness at first, having surprising knowledge of case details going back a hundred years and more.

L.Janáček, Věc Makropulos, Mackerras / WPh / Söderström... Decca L.Janáček, The Makrop. Case, Mackerras / ENO O. / Barker et al. Chandos (Opera in English)

Emilia Marty, it is slowly revealed, is the great grandmother of one of the contestants, and the lover of the great-great grandfather of the other… then still living under the pseudonym Ellian Macgregor. She couldn’t care less who of the two receives the legacy of Josef Ferdinand Prus, but she does care about getting her hands on the recipe for the formula of eternal youth that has afforded her 337 years so far. Unfortunately a life not being finite means a life without intensity, without perceptible arch; Emilia ex-Ellian ex-Elina Makropulos (her actual, original name) has become a cynical and cold creature that suffers from her longevity more than she enjoys it. Thanks to Janáček, who superimposes his ever-lasting unsuccessful love-affair with Kamila Stösslová into this, and every other opera, she has spurts of humanity, breaking out like passionate rashes. Janáček bestows her with magnificent music… furthered in this case by Esa-Pekka Salonen’s markedly vital, fiery-yet-objective reading. Navigating the organ-like blocks, Salonen created an arch through the music that sucked one in from the first sweeping minutes to the harshly cackling, then Puccini-esque lyrical, finally brass-question-mark dotted finale.

I thought I had even perceived aspects of Salome in the music and Angela Denoke’s portrayal of Emilia Marty but in a brief and uncomfortable interview some days later, Denoke suggested that was nonsense of the first order, as the characters have nothing whatsoever in common. (They do have something in common, actually, and that is Denoke who was not only outstanding in every way in Makropolus but also the most notable Salome I have seen in the last few years. Perhaps I was thus misled.)

If Denoke stood out, she did so from a very even and satisfying cast with Johan Rueter as Jaroslav Prus really coming to life in the last act once he hears of the suicide of his son, Janek Prus (Aleš Briscein). Raymend Very as Albert Gregor, Peter Hoare as Vítek, and Jurgita Adamonytė as the aspiring singer and proto-Bobby soxer Krista. In conversation Angela Denoke complained that singers get very little credit for the productions they help to create, the focus instead going exclusively to the director. Christoph Marthaler, in this case. The irony is that in a successful production, the memory of the singers increasingly turns into a dramatic memory; each singer part of a whole and inextricably connected to a greater impression. The great stillness and tension with which Denoke’s Emilia endures the world around her (“very difficult at first, because I am a very physical singer and prefer to move around”) thus became part of a greater impression of ‘flavor’. That flavor, found in abundance, was the work of Anna Viebrock, responsible for the superb stage set—a 1920s central European court room that might have been straight out of a Kafka play—and the period costumes.


To the left and the right of the wide stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus were—literally—side-shows going on. An entertaining prologue (mouthed and super-titled by two re-occurring, chain-smoking extras, one young, tall, and beautiful, the other old, wry, and diminutive) set up the question of mortality, how long people ought to live, who would be allowed to live longer, who would decide on that, and whether Emilia Marty is indeed the greatest opera singer. The theme of (near-) eternal recurrence is played out not only on stage—insinuated in the long life of Elina Makropulos—but in this side-show. Whether a burly warden carries the old lady off stage only to find her re-appearing at the door he just walked her from, or whether he brings one bouquet of flowers after another to her (a ceremony that lasted for nearly half an hour), these bits take the pressure off the main events… almost as if Marthaler didn’t quite trust the story itself to be sufficient to hold one’s interest. The same principle ruled the third act when during the orchestral music the court assembles and disassembles (largely through trap doors) thrice or four times… giving a physical touch to the trial that already lasts for 100 years. Every character, except the stiffly rigorous Emilia, has a tick or develops one over the course of the opera. Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s Dr.Kolenatý has fits of anger when he has trouble getting out of or into his coats and frocks. The four men awaiting the verdict during Emilia-Elina’s confession fidget, squirm, and fuss with increasing violence. Why exactly isn’t always clear, but Marthaler-typical, it’s quite amusing.

The appealing production and its singing actors work on a superficial, gorgeous, and immediate level that—sideshow or not—didn’t distract from the music. Marthaler’s direction is neither a radical interpretation nor an outrageously clever way to shine new light on the core of the work, it is ‘ambiance’. The best thing about it is ultimately that it succeeded in making the music work on the audience in its most powerful possible, direct way. What remains is that sense of flavor and the will to taste from the cup of Janáček again, as soon as possible.

All pictures courtesy of the Salzburg Festival, © Walter Mair

For Your Consideration: 'Pianomania'

The Austrian documentary Pianomania: In Search of the Perfect Sound, from 2009, has received a very limited release this summer in the United States. (The Goethe-Institut hosted a one-time screening of the movie last year.) It has had mostly tepid reviews, generally by film critics who are not really classical music-heads, and the gross has been low, even for a documentary about something that is fairly esoteric. Directed by Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck, the film follows the nerve-wracking work of Steinway piano technician Stefan Knüpfer, as he fine-tunes his company's finest concert grand pianos for some of the best pianists in the world to play in the concert halls of Vienna. Like Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, from 2007, it is something that anyone with a love of the piano must see.

Fortunately, for those who are not piano mavens, the film does not delve too far into the minutiae of what Knüpfer does. There are no technical explanations of the instrument's action and not too much focus on the many small tweaks and adjustments that the technician can make. What the film does trace is the interaction between Knüpfer and the pianists he works for, as well as the recording engineers and producers, sound technicians, and even piano movers -- the people behind the scenes who make great concerts and recordings happen. The main subject is the exacting search of Pierre-Laurent Aimard to find the right sounds for his rather wonderful recording of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge. A work that is generally recognized to have been intended for the keyboard, it has gestures that suggest Bach had in mind at least references to or evocations of larger ensembles of instruments, and it is those various colors, or at least hints of them, that Aimard wants brought out in the piano he is playing. Anyone who enjoyed Aimard's recording or who loves to dissect the finest particles of sound will be captivated as Aimard goes in search of sounds, from a single piano, that evoke harpsichord, clavichord, organ, chamber music, and so on. To see Aimard's approach to the work made me appreciate the recording, and his live performance of the work, in a new light.

Other Reviews: Washington Post | Boston Globe | San Francisco Chronicle | Seattle Times Movie Review Intelligence

Knüpfer frets the most in his sessions with Aimard, fascinated from a scientific, technical point of view at how precisely the pianist hears every gradation of sound and feels it in the mechanism of the instrument. Knüpfer even makes a visit to hear some historical harpsichords and clavichords played by a specialist, recognizing his own deficit in that area as he tries to come up with the sound "families" that Aimard wants. This section of the movie makes so clear the difference between those small, intimate instruments and the wild beast that is the piano -- its method of producing sound so complicated, its tone so vast and ferocious, and its size so vast that it requires three strong people just to move it. All of the Steinways in the film are identified by three-digit numbers attached to them, and they are captioned by these monikers in the same way the artists are when they appear.

By contrast to Aimard, other pianists require less nuance once they have found the sound that pleases their ears: a bright tanginess for Lang Lang, an even smoothness top to bottom for Alfred Brendel (then in his final year of performing), a sense of magic for Julius Drake (shown rehearsing a Lied with tenor Ian Bostridge). Only the sensitive Austrian pianist Till Fellner, another Ionarts favorite who once referred to a local embassy's prize piano as firewood, comes close to Aimard's level of finicky meticulousness. Throughout, Knüpfer leavens the movie with his own gentle wit, even as he has to dash up and down stairs and call in favors to satisfy a pianist's demands (Aimard is not "neurotic," he insists, he is "specialized"). In one of the best moments, Knüpfer takes almost vicious delight in recounting the story of telling Aimard that the Steinway he played at a triumphant concert was to be sold, that he would never play it again. These moments of levity help brighten a film that could be overwhelmed by Knüpfer's own "specialized" obsessions, but he takes just as seriously an entirely different sort of work, as he helps keyboard clown Hyung-Ki Joo work up some new sketches for his Victor Borge-like piano comedy sketches.

In the Washington area, Pianomania is screening only at the E St. Cinema and only through this Thursday.

Phantasmorgastic, but with Shadows: FrOSch @ Salzburg — Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 16 )

Richard Strauss • Die Frau ohne Schatten

Richard Strauss’ intended masterpiece, Die Frau ohne Schatten, is hard to hail without acknowledging that it has weaknesses, too. Best and most tersely put by Paul Brekker after the 1919 premiere: “The opera suffers from that most dangerous of ailments: it’s boring. It drains the audience’s willpower to object, lulls him with euphony and melodies, dulls her with images and theatrical phantasmagoria. A mix made lethal by stretching it over three acts and eleven scenes.” But it’s also Christian Thielemann’s favorite Strauss work because, as he explains, “it has it all; the finely articulated structure and full-blooded build-ups, poetry and hysteria, and glorious harmonies. Elektra meets Ariadne.”

R.Strauss, FrOSch, K.Böhm / WPh / Rysanek, Hopf, Goltz, Schöffler, Höngen Decca (stereo) R.Strauss, FrOSch, K.Böhm / WPh / Rysanek, Hopf, Nilsson, Barry, Hesse DG (live) R.Strauss, FrOSch, W.Sawallisch / BRSO / Studer, Kollo, Vinzing, Schmidt, Schwarz EMI (studio, uncut) R.Strauss, FrOSch, W.Sawallisch / Bavarian State Orchestra / DeVol, Seiffert, Martin, Titus, Lipovsek TDK (DVD)

The Salzburg production of Die Frau ohne Schatten must be hailed, in any case, because musically (if not vocally) it was a stunning success thanks to Thielemann’s conducting; succulent and lean in turns, modern yet intransigently sumptuous. The staging by Christof Loy, in four words, was too clever by half… but at least it was clever and pretty to look at, too.

Die Frau ohne Schatten, tenderly nicknamed “Frosch” (Frog) by Strauss, is not performed very often because of the demands it makes on casting, scenery, and orchestra: It basically needs two top-notch dramatic sopranos of Wagnerian proportions, one Heldentenor, a dramatic mezzo and one Wotan-esque bass-baritone. And all—please—with a lyrical bent. It asks for over 150 instruments and almost as many musicians, and the stage direction would seem to demand on the spot floods and several instances of magic. It would be perfect for a film version of the opera, but sufficient to turn whole shocks of hair gray on directors trying to figure out how to stage the odd tale. One woman—the shadow-less empress—cannot bear children but wants to, in order to become truly human. Another would gladly give up her right (or ability) to bear children in exchange for the alleged liberty that comes with that. Their dramatically rather less relevant men are active bystanders. A Nurse, the Empress’ guardian—and creature of both worlds, the human world of the dyer Barak and his wife and the nether-realm of Emperor and Empress—is the catalyst and nefarious schemer. Strauss wanted to create an opera that was to the Magic Flute what he thought his Rosenkavalier was to Le Nozze di Figaro. The result is more of a Parsifal-themed Magic Flute… except that the works of Strauss (especially true when working with Hugo von Hofmannsthal) have an inextricably human, even bourgeois, element at their center, no matter how superficial magic is involved.

Reactionary—old fashioned, counter to our zeitgeist—might be the form of Die Frau ohne Schatten. But the expression itself, of the desire for love, marriage, and family as the nucleus of life, expressed not the least in childbearing, is not reactionary. It does not fit easily into a time dominated by narcissism and ‘self-actualization’—a time where children are deemed a burden or sacrifice, a manifestation of one’s own ego, or a territorial claim on a woman, an abdication of the fully lived life, rather than its noblest goal and fulfillment. But the desire itself is and will always remain a beautiful thing. Is that so hard to accept when staging this opera? The language of the catholic Hofmannsthal strikes 21^st century ears as patronizing, no doubt, but it is merely old-fashioned yet well intentioned (like Barak himself)?

Christof Loy strips away the immediateness of the subject and introduces distance by going the route of opera-performance-within-opera-performance. He sets the story like someone who does not believe in the emotion that lies at the heart of Hofmannsthal’s nostalgia-laced text, except on a superficial level. He describes and circumnavigates the core without feeling or touching it. The narrative is tied to the first complete* recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten with Karl Böhm in the winter of 1955 for Decca. Set (anachronistically) in Vienna’s Sophiensaal, the space for many other very famous Decca opera productions in Vienna, it focuses on the stories of the performing singers (among them the ‘innocent’ newcomer Leonie Rysanek as the Empress and Elisabeth Höngen—a German star in the war-years (!) and a favorite of Karl Böhm as the manipulative nurse), and the analogies between their collegial relationships and the relationships of the characters in the libretto. Eventually (late in the first, early in the second Act) there occurs an overlap of interpreters and roles. The jealousies, desires, and fears of interpreter and role blend into an intractable whole. The singer of the role of Empress enters a new, strange world populated with already-famous, experienced colleagues. Stephen Gould alias Hans Hopf alias The Emperor is a nervous tenor who seeks isolation and records his difficult aria in a secluded session at night. The Dyer and Wife are married but estranged (Christel Goltz and Paul Schöffler of the unpaid, unheated 1955 recording sessions were definitely neither) and—as in the opera, so in this opera about the recording of the same opera—find together again during the ‘recording’ of Act III. In a long dream scene all the extras are replaced with identically dressed and groomed seven-year-old alter egos.

(Confusing might be that some elements of this, Loy’s production, would easily fit the story of Karl Böhm’s other, later performances and recordings in the late 70s: Birgit Nilsson as the blond ‘foreign’ singer (Empress Dyer's wife)… except no longer new or an outsider, and two protagonists—Walter Berry and Christa Ludwig—as a famous married singer-couple… except then already divorced and she singing the part of the Nurse, not the Dyer’s wife.)

A sense of general unease is conveyed terribly-terrifically, by the many supernumeraries that populate the set help create the unspoken tensions, and the gorgeously detailed set (Johannes Leiacker with Ursula Renzenbrink in charge of the costumes) is time-travel-inducing… down to the self-important 1950s secretary and groundskeeper. The specter of the Third Reich is clearly still hanging over the scene… and could he not, only a decade after 1945, with people like Böhm involved and taking place in the seedily anti-Semitic Vienna?! Anne Schwanewilms in her role as young-Rysanek/Empress moves about the set as if disconnected from the rest, observing and occasionally reacting. In line with the opera, she doesn’t really get going until act III, but then with minimal means to great effect. Her high notes were excellent, clean, penetrating, even as some of the murderous leaps fell short. But that’s peanuts in a live performance of this length and of such demands. Notable, though, that in one very small frequency band, stretching at the most a semi-tone in her lower mid-range, her vocal chords made worrisome noises, like a speaker’s busted and frayed tweeter fluttering and jittering.

Benefiting most from the fact that the performance was—on Thielemann’s insistence—uncut, is the Nurse whose role becomes the dramatic equivalent (and more) of the other four principals. Michaela Schuster, more stage-animal than a beautiful voice, jumped into the role head first and came out victorious—cajoling and oogling at her colleagues with an expressive face vaguely reminiscent of Stephen Fry’s. Dramatically it was a peak performance and any stridence appropriate given that her parts include the most modern music, reminiscent of Elektra or Salome or even Ortrud in Lohengrin.

The Emperor might be the least important of those five (even in the cut version), but he makes up lack of singing time and action with the difficulty of his parts. Stephen Gould performed admirably more than convincingly. Wolfgang Koch had more to do and did more with it; his bearish Barak plead believably for his idea of forgiveness, love, and family as something that spelled not servitude (as his wife first sees it; ditto Christof Loy) but a merging of two into one as an equitable partnership. The sacrifice of egoism yes, but not individuality. It’s mutual, tender, loving, even if the language to express it is archaic. His acting could have been better, though;

The emotions expressed by his Barak/Schöffler were not quite believable. In particular the rage and the relief felt staged, not lived. ‘Seething’ looks distinctly different than his hectic gesticulation, as do helplessly boiling over with anger and blood-rage. A lesson with Christian Gerhaher might prove the necessary treatment.


Evelyn Herlitzius, the Dyer’s wife, combined vocal prowess with dramatic skill in the best performance of the night. She gave much needed life to the frosty production, especially in the second act when musically and dramatically things really started to come together. The ears woke up, or perhaps the music, or the performers (the Vienna Philharmonic had, on this, the penultimate of seven performances, smeared a few too many delicate bits in the first act), or all three… in any case one got a more palpable sense of the acoustic awesomeness of the work and a tear or two may have moistened my cheek. Thielemann coaxed and received from an orchestra that eats out of the palm of his hand, neither afraid of underscoring the score’s modernity nor hesitant when it came to luxuriating and reveling in the sound. One felt at all times the audience’s sensitive for the achievements that are CT’s in the success of this work.

Die Frau ends, like most Strauss operas, on a note of distinct ambiguity. Although superficially everything is hunky-dory, with the couples extolling humanity and praising their babies-to-be, mild uncertainty creeps in through the cracks. The scene—“a beautiful landscape” says the libretto—was set apart from the recording session theme… now set a few weeks later at a Christmas gala concert with a boys choir (those future children!) present and the Empress lives through it as if it were still all-too surreal that she has made it into the upper echelon of continental opera stars—exiting to terribly contrived slow-motion applause. Clever, again. Just a little too clever.

Pictures courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Monika Rittershaus.

* “Complete” is relative. There are as of yet only two [thanks, musicologyman!] uncut studio recordings of Die Frau ohne Schatten, which are those of Wolfgang Sawallisch on EMI, with fewer famous names than many of the bootleg recordings out there, but altogether the best and best sounding of the bunch. Since Christian Thielemann’s performance was captured by ORF and Unitel, we can expect the DVD of the production to be the second uncut Frau on record.